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An investigation of the use of transmission ultrasound to measure acoustic attenuation changes in thermal therapy

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Abstract

The potential of using a commercial ultrasound transmission imaging system to quantitatively monitor tissue attenuation changes after thermal therapy was investigated. The ultrasound transmission imaging system used, the AcoustoCam (Imperium Inc., MD) allows ultrasonic images to be captured using principles similar to that of a CCD-type camera that collects light. Ultrasound energy is focused onto a piezoelectric array by an acoustic lens system, creating a gray scale acoustic image. In this work, the pixel values from the acoustic images were assigned acoustic attenuation values by imaging polyacrylamide phantoms of varying known attenuation. After the calibration procedure, data from heated polyacrylamide/bovine serum albumin (BSA) based tissue-mimicking (TM) phantoms and porcine livers were acquired. Samples were heated in water at temperatures of 35, 45, 55, 65, and 75°C for 1 h. Regions of interest were chosen in the images and acoustic attenuation values before and after heating were compared. An increase in ultrasound attenuation was found in phantoms containing BSA and in porcine liver. In the presence of BSA, attenuation in the TM phantom increased by a factor of 1.5, while without BSA no significant changes were observed. The attenuation of the porcine liver increased by up to a factor of 2.4, consistent with previously reported studies. The study demonstrates the feasibility of using a quantitative ultrasound transmission imaging system for monitoring thermal therapy.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by funds from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Innovation Trust and Ryerson University. The authors thank John Kula and Jack Gurney at Imperium Inc. for their support and Dr. J. Carl Kumaradas for his excellent comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank colleagues, Lenoid Guerchkovitch, Arthur Worthington, and Xia Wu for their technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5B-2K3

    Neeta Parmar & Michael C. Kolios

  2. Department of Physics, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5B-2K3

    Michael C. Kolios

Authors
  1. Neeta Parmar
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  2. Michael C. Kolios
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Correspondence to Michael C. Kolios.

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Parmar, N., Kolios, M.C. An investigation of the use of transmission ultrasound to measure acoustic attenuation changes in thermal therapy. Med Bio Eng Comput 44, 583–591 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0067-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0067-8

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