Imaging the nonlinear ultrasonic parameter of a medium.

A technique for imaging the nonlinear ultrasonic parameter B/A has been developed. The nonlinear parameter describes the dependence of ultrasonic velocity on pressure and may well provide a new and powerful tool for characterizing both biological and nonbiological media. Our approach is based on observing the interaction of two ultrasonic waves with different frequencies and power levels. A low frequency pump wave, with power level suitable for medical diagnosis (1 mW/cm2), is used to sinusoidally modulate the sound pressure over the region of interest. A much lower intensity high-frequency probe beam is propagated perpendicularly to the pump beam. The phase of the probe wave is modified in proportion to the integral of the product of the nonlinear parameter B/A and the pressure of the pump wave, which varies sinusoidally along the probe beam. This phase change provides a Fourier component of the distribution of the nonlinear parameter B/A for the spatial frequency corresponding to the inverse of the pump wavelength. By changing the frequency of the pump waves, the spatial frequency is changed and a set of spatial Fourier coefficients of the distribution of the nonlinear parameter B/A is obtained. An inverse operation then gives the one-dimensional image along the probe beam. If the probe beam is scanned mechanically, the entire cross-sectional image is obtained. Several images of the nonlinear parameter of biological objects were generated with our system. To our knowledge, these represent the first images of the nonlinear parameter to be reported in the literature. The nonlinear parameter of water was also measured and agreed well with values obtained by other techniques.