A preliminary study of a novel scan method for focused ultrasound surgery

High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) technique is regarded as a noninvasive treatment method for benign and malignant tumor with great potential. While ablating a large volume tumor by using scan method, it is difficult to decide the sequence of the foci and focal zone scanning path trajectories. This article proposes a rapid scan strategy for ablating target regions which is available only for phased array transducers since fast change on focus position is needed. According to this new method, a predetermined sequence of treatment spots is applied, which is uniform random-distributed and the heating time on every spot is much shorter than the tradition method. Through numerical simulation, we analyzed the new scan method with different treatment parameters. A symmetric lesion was resulted from the new random scan method. Additionally, through this method, the problem of treatment plan in HIFU could be simplified.