Proposed standard thermal test object for medical ultrasound

A general design for a thermal test object (TTO) is proposed. A number of novel features make the design particularly suitable for use as a standardised device for assessing the heating capability of diagnostic ultrasound beams. To assess performance, soft-tissue TTOs have been made containing thin-film thermocouples sandwiched between discs of tissue-mimicking gel. Installed in an appropriate measurement system, these TTOs exhibit excellent thermal and spatial resolution, allowing the ultrasound beam to be located rapidly and reproducibly. The measured temperature rise after 3 minutes of heating has been compared with theoretical predictions based on measured pressure distributions, and agreement is within 10%. Other studies have shown that soft-tissue- and bone-mimicking TTOs can be used to evaluate a wide range of ultrasound fields and that different physical tissue models can be simulated. It is concluded that this design would be suitable for providing reference assessments of the thermal hazard posed by diagnostic ultrasound under standardised conditions.