In the field of tumor treatment, high-intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) tumor treatment technology is the fourth new tumor treatment technology that has emerged after surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.The common clinical HIFU is to use ultrasonic media to radiate energy to the tumor site, so that the temperature of the tumor tissue rises to 65℃ or above, which has achieved the purpose of treating the tumor.The main biological effect of this technology is mainly thermal effect.It is a green and non-invasive tumor treatment technology.Studies have proved that HIFU treatment technology can be used to treat solid tumors of the human body such as breast cancer, uterine fibroids, prostate cancer, liver cancer, kidney cancer, and bone cancer.
As one of the core components of the system, the HIFU treatment probe, its main role is to achieve a high degree of sound field focusing gain while ensuring a very low gate plate, and can allow a wide range of treatment.Among the types of HIFU spherical probes, they are classified according to the number of array elements, which are mainly divided into single-chip self-focusing ultrasonic probes and multi-array concave spherical focusing probes.However, the production cost of a single-chip self-focusing ultrasonic probe is expensive, and its power amplifier is difficult to make. In addition, the probe can only achieve local tumor treatment by mechanical scanning, and the design of its scanning path is limited by the mechanical motion control system.Multi-array concave spherical focused ultrasonic probes are generally based on a large number of small-size planar array elements arranged through the spherical surface to achieve electronic focusing and scanning, which can be more flexible to realize a variety of complex scanning methods to meet the complex three-dimensional treatment rake area.
The many parameters of the high-intensity focused ultrasound spherical crown surface array directly affect the performance and production cost of the treatment system. How to use a reasonable number of array elements to combine a spherical crown surface treatment ultrasonic array structure with high focusing gain, taking into account the objective needs of treatment such as the depth of treatment.To this end, an array arrangement method that can achieve a high filling rate of the spherical crown surface of the array element is proposed.Regular hexagons of the same shape and size are arranged through the spherical surface to achieve a high filling rate of the treatment array, thereby achieving the effect of high focusing gain.
The arrangement of the array elements is named the arrangement of the spherical crown surface array. Using the five adjacent triangles of the regular icosahedron as the modeling material, a geometric model of the spherical crown surface array composed of a finite number of planar regular hexagonal arrays of the same shape and size is established.
Based on the model, a spherical crown surface array probe was made.
For the launch control of this probe, we have made a launch board and a control board.The control board realizes the overall control function, communicates with the host computer PC through the USB interface, and parses the control commands issued by the PC and forwards them to the 4 transmitting boards.The motherboard implements the connection function, connecting 4 transmitter boards and 1 control board. The control board is responsible for the communication and coordination between the transmitter board, power supply, PC and probe.HIFU belongs to power ultrasound, so the power monitoring of the transmitter board is particularly important for the stability of the platform operation. We have designed 2 temperature sensors for each transmitter board, and the interval detection time is 2 seconds. The interval time can be set by the user, and the voltage detection sensor is designed for feedback and early warning of the transmission voltage to ensure the safety of system operation.
This project won the excellent product award at the 18th China International High-tech Achievements Fair
