As a kind of multi-physics imaging approach integrating the advantages of electrical impedance tomography and ultrasound imaging with the improved spatial resolution and image contrast, magneto-acoustic tomography with magnetic induction (MAT-MI) is demonstrated to have the capability of electrical impedance contrast imaging for biological tissues with conductivity differences. By being detected with a strong directional transducer, abrupt pressure change is proved to be generated by the gradient of the induced Lorentz force along the force direction at conductivity boundary. A simplified boundary normal pressure (BNP)-based conductivity reconstruction algorithm is proposed and the formula for conductivity distribution inside the object with the clear physical meaning of pressure derivative, is derived. Numerical simulations of acoustic pressure and conductivity reconstruction are conducted based on a 2-layer eccentric cylindrical phantom model using Hilbert transform. The reconstructed two-dimensional conductivity images accord well with the model, thus successfully making up the deficiency of only imaging conductivity boundary in traditional MAT-MI. The proposed method is also demonstrated to have a spatial resolution of one wavelength. This study provides a new method of reconstructing accurate electrical conductivity and suggests the potential applications of MAT-MI in imaging biological tissues with conductivity difference.

As a new treatment modality with little thermal damage and few cell metastases to surrounding normal tissues, high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapy is considered to be one of the most promising technologies for tumor therapy in the 21st century. However, noninvasive temperature monitoring for the focal region exhibits great significance of precise thermal dosage control in HIFU treatment. By combining electrical impedance measurement and HIFU, an electrical impedance tomography (EIT) based temperature monitoring method using surface voltages is proposed to reconstruct the distribution of electrical conductivity inside the focal plane on the basis of the temperature dependent electrical impedance of tissues. In theoretical study, a comprehensive system of EIT measurement during HIFU therapy is established. With the consideration of acoustic absorption in viscous tissues, three-dimensional Helmholtz equation for HIFU is simplified into two-dimensional axisymmetric cylindrical coordinates, and the characteristics of temperature rising in the focal region are derived using Pennes bio-heat transfer equation. Then, by introducing the temperature-conductivity relation into tissues, the processing methods for electrical field and surface voltage in the focal region are constructed with constant current injection from two symmetrical electrodes. In simulation study, by applying the experimental parameters of the focused transducer, the distributions of acoustic pressure and temperature are simulated at a fixed acoustic power, and then the corresponding distributions of conductivity in the focal plane are achieved at different treatment times for centric and eccentric focusing. Furthermore, with the simulations of current density and electrical potential generated by the rotating current injection from 16 pairs of symmetrical electrodes, 32×32 voltages are detected by the 32 surface electrodes placed around the focal plane of the model. In conductivity image reconstruction, the modified Newton-Raphson (MNR) algorithm is employed to conduct iterative calculation. It shows that with the increase of HIFU treatment time, the electrical conductivity in the focal region increases accordingly and reaches a maximum value in the center due to the highest acoustic pressure and the most energy accumulation. It is proved that not only the position of the focal center, but also the conductivity distribution inside the focal region can be restored accurately by the proposed EIT based reconstruction algorithm. The favorable results demonstrate the feasibility of temperature monitoring during HIFU therapy, and also provide a new method of evaluating the noninvasive efficacy and controlling the dose based on electrical impedance measurements.

As a kind of special acoustic field, the helical wavefront of an acoustic vortex (AV) beam is demonstrated to have a pressure zero with phase singularity at the center in the transverse plane. The orbital angular momentum of AVs can be applied to the field of particle manipulation, which attracts more and more attention in acoustic researches. In this paper, by using the simplified circular array of point sources, dual coaxial AV beams are excited by the even-and odd-numbered sources with the topological charges of l E and l O based on the phase-coded approach, and the composite acoustic field with an on-axis center-AV and multiple off-axis sub-AVs can be generated by the superimposition of the AV beams forThe generation of edge phase dislocation is theoretically derived and numerically analyzed for l E = −l O . The numbers and the topological charges as well as the locations of the center-AV and sub-AVs are demonstrated, which are proved to be determined by the topological charges of the coaxial AV beams. The proposed approach breaks through the limit of only one on-axis AV with a single topological charge along the beam axis, and also provides the feasibility of off-axis particle trapping with multiple AVs in object manipulation.

No abstract

No abstract