Mechanisms of attenuation and heating dissipation of ultrasound in the skull bone: Comparison between simulation models and experiments

Ultrasonic transmission measurements show that the ultrasound beam undergoes significant attenuation while propagating through the skull sample with values ranging from -12.6±1.33 dB. Simulations results indicate that scattering and mode conversion are responsible for the majority of the total acoustic attenuation (-11.2 dB). Absorption of the skull at 1 MHz was determined to be 2 dB/cm for the compression wave and 4 dB/cm for the shear wave to match the experimental attenuation measurements. Based on this absorption value, temperature rises (up to 11.6°C) were numerically computed using the 3D thermal simulation and were in good agreement with the experimental infrared camera measurements.