3D-printed adaptive acoustic lens as a disruptive technology for transcranial ultrasound therapy using single-element transducers

• Published in: Physics in medicine & biology Vol. 63; no. 2; p. 025026
• Main Authors: Maimbourg, Guillaume, Houdouin, Alexandre, Deffieux, Thomas, Tanter, Mickael, Aubry, Jean-François
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 16-01-2018
• Subjects: Acoustics; Brain Mapping - methods; Humans; Lenses; Printing, Three-Dimensional - instrumentation; Skull - diagnostic imaging; Transducers; Ultrasonic Therapy - instrumentation; Ultrasonic Therapy - methods
• ISSN: 1361-6560
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/aaa037

The development of multi-element arrays for better control of the shape of ultrasonic beams has opened the way for focusing through highly aberrating media, such as the human skull. As a result, the use of brain therapy with transcranial-focused ultrasound has rapidly grown. Although effective, such technology is expensive. We propose a disruptive, low-cost approach that consists of focusing a 1 MHz ultrasound beam through a human skull with a single-element transducer coupled with a tailored silicone acoustic lens cast in a 3D-printed mold and designed using computed tomography-based numerical acoustic simulation. We demonstrate on N  =  3 human skulls that adding lens-based aberration correction to a single-element transducer increases the deposited energy on the target 10 fold.