A Dual Curvature Shell Phased Array Simulation for Delivery of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound

This paper describes the design and the evaluation for a simulation model for the dual curvature ultrasound phased array. The main goal of this simulation is to enhance the usage of dual curvature ultrasound phased array in ultrasound therapy with three dimensional phased arrays. In our simulation, focusing the total acoustic power within a specific phase can be controlled dynamically for each individual element. Moreover, a 45 steering angle in x-z plan was achieved. A software based simulation using MATLAB was performed to verify focusing and steering capability of the proposed array for three different types of arrays. The results showed a safety improvement for both of focusing and steering angle for the dual curvature phased array compared with planner and spherical types. Furthermore, the phased arrays have three different shapes; the planner phased array which was used as reference, spherical, and dual curvature shapes. Based on the conducted experiments, the results showed that the spherical and dual curvature shapes have a better focusing and steering angle generally compared with the reference phased array. As well as, the dual curvature phased array has additional capability of focusing outside the geometric volume, without any grating lobe effects.