Overcoming acoustic field and skull non-uniformities
AssigneeInsightec, Ltd.
InventorsKobi VORTMAN, Shuki VITEK, Eyal ZADICARIO, Yoav LEVY
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Various approaches for heating a target region substantially uniformly include identifying one or more locations of one or more hot spots in the target region and/or surrounding regions of the target region during an ultrasound sonication process; computing a temporal variation to an output parameter of at least one of the transducer elements based at least in part on the identified location(s) of the hot spot(s); and operating the at least one transducer element to achieve the temporal variation of the output parameter so as to minimize the hot spot(s).
Claims22
A method of heating a target region using an ultrasound transducer comprising a plurality of transducer elements, the method comprising:
- (a) identifying a location of at least one hot spot in at least one of the target region or a region surrounding the target region during an ultrasound sonication process, the hot spot having a time-averaged energy density above a predefined acceptable level;
- (b) based at least in part on the identified location of the hot spot, computing a temporal variation to an output parameter of at least one of the transducer elements that will reduce the time-averaged energy density of the hot spot to the predefined acceptable level;
- and
- (c) operating the at least one transducer element to achieve the temporal variation of the output parameter.
11-17. (canceled)
A system for heating a target region, the system comprising:
- an ultrasound transducer comprising a plurality of transducer elements;
- and
- a controller configured to:
- (a) identify a location of at least one hot spot in at least one of the target region or a region surrounding the target region during an ultrasound sonication process, the hot spot having a time-averaged energy density above a predefined acceptable level;
- (b) based at least in part on the identified location of the hot spot, compute a temporal variation to an output parameter of at least one of the transducer elements that will reduce the time-averaged energy density of the hot spot to the predefined acceptable level;
- and
- (c) operate the at least one transducer element to achieve the temporal variation of the output parameter.
28-34. (canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.