[Acoustic microscope and its medical applications].

There are two kinds of the acoustic microscope, the one is the Scanning Laser Acoustic Microscope, SLAM and the other the Mechanical Scanned Acoustic Microscope, SAM. In the acoustic microscope, high frequency ultrasound of 100 MHZ to 500 MHZ was used and the resolving power was in the range of 5 to 10 microns. The propagating speed and attenuation of ultrasound from the C-mode image which was obtained by mechanically scan with laser or ultrasound. From the results of the experiments by using the SAM to analyze acoustic characteristics of the tissue specimens which were taken from the patients with cardiac sarcoidosis, HCM, DCM, gastric and kidney cancer, clinical significances and usefulness of the evaluation for physical characteristics of the tissue were discussed in this paper.