Passive spatial mapping of inertial cavitation during HIFU exposure

A novel method for mapping inertial cavitation activity during high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) exposure is presented. Inertial cavitation has been previously shown to result in increased heat deposition and to be associated with broadband noise emissions that can be readily monitored using a passive receiver without interference from the main HIFU signal. In the present study, the signals received passively by each of 64 elements on a standard diagnostic array placed coaxially with the HIFU transducer are combined using time exposure acoustics to generate maps of inertially cavitating regions during HIFU exposure of an agar-based tissue-mimicking material. The technique is shown to be effective in localizing single-bubble activity, as well as contiguous and disjoint cavitating regions instigated by creating regions of lower cavitation threshold within the tissue phantom. The cavitation maps obtained experimentally are also found to be in good agreement with computational simulations and theoretical predictions. Unlike B-mode imaging, which requires interleaving with the HIFU pulse, passive array-based mapping of cavitation activity is possible during HIFU exposure. If cavitating regions can be directly correlated to increased tissue damage, this novel cavitation mapping technique could enable real-time HIFU treatment monitoring.