Comparative Characterization of Nonlinear Ultrasound Fields Generated by Sonalleve V1 and V2 MR-HIFU Systems

A Sonalleve magnetic resonance-guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) clinical system (Profound Medical, Mississauga, ON, Canada) has been shown to generate nonlinear ultrasound fields with shocks up to 100 MPa at the focus as required for HIFU applications such as boiling histotripsy of hepatic and renal tumors. The Sonalleve system has two versions V1 and V2 of the therapeutic array, with differences in focusing angle, focus depth, arrangement of elements, and the size of a central opening that is twice larger in the V2 system compared to the V1. The goal of this study was to compare the performance of the V1 and V2 transducers for generating high-amplitude shock-wave fields and to reveal the impact of different array geometries on shock amplitudes at the focus. Nonlinear modeling of the field in water using boundary conditions reconstructed from holography measurements shows that at the same power output, the V2 array generates 10–15-MPa lower shock amplitudes at the focus. Consequently, substantially higher power levels are required for the V2 system to reach the same shock-wave exposure conditions in histotripsy-type treatments. Although this difference is mainly caused by the smaller focusing angle of the V2 array, the larger central opening of the V2 array has a nontrivial impact. By excluding coherently interacting weakly focused waves coming from the central part of the source, the presence of the central opening results in a somewhat higher effective focusing angle and thus higher shock amplitudes at the focus. Axisymmetric equivalent source models were constructed for both arrays, and the importance of including the central opening was demonstrated. These models can be used in the “HIFU beam” software for simulating nonlinear fields of the Sonalleve V1 and V2 systems in water and flat-layered biological tissues.