High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) Propagation Through a Tissue Phantom
Application ID: 90191
This tutorial studies the propagation of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) though a tissue phantom. HIFU is used in many different biomedical applications such as thermal ablation of tumors, transcranial HIFU surgery, shock wave lithotripsy, etc. A HIFU transducer typically contains a focusing lens that makes the emitted ultrasonic signal reach the highest intensity within a focal zone. When the emitted signal has a sufficiently high amplitude, nonlinear effects become significant, which results in the generation of the higher-order harmonics during the propagation of the signal.
The nonlinear propagation of a HIFU signal is modeled using the Nonlinear Pressure Acoustics, Time Explicit physics interface. In this example, the signal amplitude at the source location is enough for the generation of higher-order harmonics, but not high enough for the formation of shocks. The emitted signal is a tone burst pulse that occupies only a limited part of the computational domain on its way. Adaptive Mesh Refinement is used for automatic remeshing following the signal propagation. The mesh is fine enough to resolve the higher-order harmonics where it is required.
This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products:
however, additional products may be required to completely define and model it. Furthermore, this example may also be defined and modeled using components from the following product combinations:
The combination of COMSOL® products required to model your application depends on several factors and may include boundary conditions, material properties, physics interfaces, and part libraries. Particular functionality may be common to several products. To determine the right combination of products for your modeling needs, review the Specification Chart and make use of a free evaluation license. The COMSOL Sales and Support teams are available for answering any questions you may have regarding this.