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An ultrasonic caliper device for measuring acoustic nonlinearity.
Christopher Hunter1, Oleg A Sapozhnikov1,2, Adam D Maxwell1,3
1CIMU, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, 1013 NE 40 Street, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Physics Procedia
|June 16, 2017
Summary
A new caliper device measures ultrasound properties like sound speed and nonlinearity for liver evaluation. This method accurately estimates the nonlinearity coefficient in water, paving the way for improved medical diagnostics.
Area of Science:
- Acoustics
- Biomedical Engineering
- Materials Science
Background:
- Accurate acoustic property measurement is crucial for medical and industrial ultrasound applications.
- Characterizing liver tissues for transplantation requires precise sound speed, attenuation, and nonlinearity data.
- Existing methods face challenges in measuring nonlinearity due to diffraction and small distortions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and evaluate a transmission-mode caliper device for measuring acoustic properties.
- To address the challenges in accurately measuring material nonlinearity using ultrasound.
- To enable simple estimation of the nonlinearity coefficient for medical applications.
Main Methods:
- A transmission-mode caliper device with direct transducer coupling to the sample.
- Measurement of propagation distance using an indicator gage and recording of receive waveforms.
- Utilizing a large transmitter and plane waves to estimate nonlinearity coefficient via a quasi-linear approximation to the lossless Burgers' equation.
Main Results:
- The developed caliper device was tested by measuring acoustic properties in water.
- The nonlinearity coefficient of water was estimated with a variability of approximately 10%.
- Plane waves were generated at 667 kHz and pressures between 0.1 and 1 MPa.
Conclusions:
- The proposed caliper device shows promise for measuring acoustic nonlinearity.
- Further research will focus on testing performance in diverse media and enhancing accuracy through transducer calibration.
- This technology has potential applications in liver characterization for transplantation evaluation.
