Self-guided ultrasound phased arrays for noninvasive surgery

A phased array system for therapeutic applications was shown to be capable of operating in a pulse-echo imaging mode. The transducer was characterized in synthetic aperture imaging of wire targets as well as imaging a speckle generating phantom. Theoretical and experimental results have shown that suitable images could be obtained using this 1 MHz transducer in a field of view (FOV) that matches its therapeutic focusing and steering range. Therefore, the transducer has the potential to be used in a self-guided mode where the imaging data can be used in refocusing the therapeutic beam. Here, the authors show the first experimental verification of refocusing this transducer in the presence of strongly scattering structures based on pulse-echo data.