MRI-compatible ultrasound heating system with ring-shaped phased arrays for breast tumor thermal therapy

Therapeutic ultrasound transducers can carry out precise and efficient power deposition for tumor thermal therapy under the guidance of magnetic resonance imaging. For a better heating, organ-specific ultrasound transducers with precision location control system should be developed for tumors located at various organs. It is feasible to perform a better heating for breast tumor thermal therapy with a ring-shaped ultrasound phased-array transducer. In this study, we developed ring-shaped phased-array ultrasound transducers with 1.0 and 2.5 MHz and a precision location control system to drive the transducers to the desired location to sonicate the designated region. Both thermo-sensitive hydrogel phantom and ex vivo fresh pork were used to evaluate the heating performance of the transducers. The results showed that the ring-shaped phased array ultrasound transducers were very promising for breast tumor heating with the variation of heating patterns and without overheating the ribs.