A new method for robotic calibration of HIFU transducer

To conduct experiments using HIFU, the position of the HIFU focus should be exactly defined. Due to variety of medium and inaccuracy of the focus, such operations are usually accompanied with ultrasound, MRI, or photo-acoustics to check the HIFU focus in real time. Commonly, the procedure is examining HIFU ultrasound in a water tank in advance, searching for the focus area formed in the water using diagnostic ultrasound. However, since the diagnostic ultrasound interferes with the ultrasound from HIFU, finding the exact focal point is extremely difficult. In this study, a new method for searching HIFU focus and calibrating the HIFU transducer is proposed, which employs a 6-DOF robot arm and a hydrophone. This new method for robotic calibration of HIFU transducer includes 3 steps as a whole: hardware calibration, ultrasonic signal processing, and searching for focused ultrasound signals. Compared with the position of the focal point using a simulated focus and found to evaluate the accuracy of the experiment.