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Updated: Sep 24, 2025
An In vitro System to Gauge the Thrombolytic Efficacy of Histotripsy and a Lytic Drug
Published on: June 4, 2021
High-spatial-resolution, instantaneous passive cavitation imaging with temporal resolution in histotripsy: a
Mok Kun Jeong1, Min Joo Choi2, Sung Jae Kwon3
1Department of Electronic Engineering, Daejin University, Pocheon, Korea.
Purpose:
In histotripsy, a shock wave is transmitted, and the resulting inertial bubble cavitation that disrupts tissue is used for treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to detect when cavitation occurs and track the position of cavitation occurrence using a new passive cavitation (PC) imaging method.
Methods:
An integrated PC image, which is constructed by collecting the focused signals at all times, does not provide information on when cavitation occurs and has poor spatial resolution. To solve this problem, we constructed instantaneous PC images by applying delay and sum beamforming at instantaneous time instants. By calculating instantaneous PC images at all data acquisition times, the proposed method can detect cavitation when it occurs by using the property that when signals from the cavitation are focused, their amplitude becomes large, and it can obtain a high-resolution PC image by masking out side lobes in the vicinity of cavitation.
Results:
Ultrasound image simulation confirmed that the proposed method has higher resolution than conventional integrated PC imaging and showed that it can determine the position and time of cavitation occurrence as well as the signal strength.
Conclusion:
Since the proposed novel PC imaging method can detect each cavitation separately when the incidence of cavitations is low, it can be used to monitor the treatment process of shock wave therapy and histotripsy, in which cavitation is an important mechanism of treatment.
