Comparative study of temperature measurements in ex vivo swine muscle and a tissue-mimicking material during high intensity focused ultrasound exposures.

Tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs) can provide a convenient, stable, and reproducible means for testing high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) devices. When TMMs containing thermal sensors are used to measure ultrasound-induced temperature rise, it is important that measurement results reasonably represent those that occur in biological tissue. Therefore the aim of this paper is to compare the thermal behavior of the TMM under HIFU exposure to that of ex vivo tissue. This was accomplished using both a previously developed TMM and fresh ex vivo swine muscle that were instrumented with bare 50 µm thin wire thermocouples. HIFU at 825 kHz was focused at the thermocouple junction. 30 s exposures of increasing peak negative pressure (1 to 5 MPa) were applied and the temperature profile during and after sonication was recorded. B-mode imaging was used to monitor bubble activity during sonication. If bubble formation was noted during the sonication, the sonication was repeated at the same pressure levels two more times at 20 min intervals. Temperature traces obtained at various pressure levels demonstrated similar types of heating profiles in both the tissue and TMM, the exact nature of which depended on whether bubbles formed during the HIFU exposure. The onset of bubble activity occurred at lower ultrasonic pressures in the TMM, but the basic temperature rise features due to HIFU exposure were essentially the same for both materials.