Page 205 - AWSAR 2.0

Ultrasound (HIFU)”. The advantage is a minimally invasive surgery with no requirement of incisions or cuts on human body to remove or treat tumours! How amazing
it sounds, right?
Heat is a form of energy
and it can have undesirable
effects if it is not controlled. Is
it possible to control the heat
caused by focused ultrasound
then? How can we control it?
To control anything we need
feedback, right? Therefore,
I and my adviser thought if it
was possible to use sound
to construct thermal maps?
This is similar to constructing
infra-red (IR) thermal maps
using IR camera. In an IR camera, the sensor tries to capture infra-red radiations emitting
all these alterations and if we can capture these changes we can track, ultimately, the temperature. Just now imagine doing this at each pixel location! What does a collection of pixels give us? Yes, your guess is right. It gives
Mr. Aliarshad Kothawala || 181
from the surface. In our case, we wanted to construct images of hotspot created by HIFU treatment, but by using ultrasound! This
“sounds” really cool, right. The sound is very sensitive to temperature. Also, when we heat the medium or target it, it undergoes changes. These changes affect the ultrasound wave propagation. If we are able to capture the reflected ultrasound the signature of the temperature is present in the reflected ultrasound. This information can be in the form of change in speed of sound, change in attenuation of sound, change in the statistical
distribution of scatterers that are present in the medium. A change in temperature causes
Heat is a form of energy and it can have undesirable effects if it is not controlled. Is it possible to control the heat caused by focused ultrasound then? How can we control it? To control anything we need feedback, right?
us an image. Also, this image is created every 10 seconds. Imagine, if I can provide you with such a collection of images at different times during the entire treatment. It becomes like a video!!! This helps to track the changes that