Effect of the Acoustic Impedance Mismatch at the Bone-Soft Tissue Interface as a Function of Frequency in Transcranial Ultrasound: A Simulation and In Vitro Experimental Study

The transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound is a method that uses a handheld low-frequency (2-2.5 MHz), pulsed Doppler phased array probe to measure blood velocity within the arteries located inside the brain. The problem with TCD lies in the low ultrasonic energy penetrating inside the brain through the skull, which leads to a low signal-to-noise ratio. This is due to several effects, including phase aberration, variations in the speed of sound in the skull, scattering, the acoustic impedance mismatch, and absorption of the three-layer medium constituted by soft tissues, the skull, and the brain. The goal of this article is to study the effect of transmission losses due to the acoustic impedance mismatch on the transmitted energies as a function of frequency. To do so, wave propagation was modeled from the ultrasonic transducer into the brain. This model calculates transmission coefficients inside the brain, leading to a frequency-dependent transmission coefficient for a given skin and bone thickness. This approach was validated experimentally by comparing the analytical results with measurements obtained from a bone phantom plate mimicking the skull. The average position error of the occurrence of the maximum amplitude between the experiment and analytical result was equivalent to a 0.06-mm error on the skin thickness given a fixed bone thickness. The similarity between the experimental and analytical results was also demonstrated by calculating correlation coefficients. The average correlation between the experimental and analytical results came out to be 0.50 for a high-frequency probe and 0.78 for a low-frequency probe. Further analysis of the simulation showed that an optimized excitation frequency can be chosen based on skin and bone thicknesses, thereby offering an opportunity to improve the image quality of TCD