Abstract: A therapeutic ultrasound system transmits a staggered or interleaved pattern of therapy beams for use in sonothrombolysis and other Vascular Acoustic Resonators (VAR) mediated therapy. The inventive technique minimizes VAR, e.g. microbubble, destruction due to adjacent beams, ensures uniform sonication of the targeted region by filling in the spaces between the beams in subsequent passes, and further provides a means for bubble replenishment to maximize the clot lysis from ultrasound. The technique is also applicable to diagnostic ultrasound, VAR mediated drug delivery and blood brain barrier opening.

Abstract: An ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system with a two dimensional array transducer performs microbubble-mediated therapy such as sonothrombolysis. The array is formed by dicing into rectilinear elements with the corner elements absent to provide a generally rounded shape that accommodates the temporal windows of the head for cranial therapeutic energy delivery. In several described implementations additional transducer elements are optimized for other specialized functions such as A-line imaging, Doppler flow detection, temporal bone thickness estimation, or cavitation detection. Preferably there are 128 therapeutic elements so that the array probe can be used with standard ultrasound systems having 128-channel beamformers.

Abstract: An apparatus for ultrasound irradiation of a body part (208) includes a first ultrasound transducer (216), and a second ultrasound transducer (212) mounted oppositely, and is configured: a) such that at least two ultrasound receiving elements, for determining a relative orientation of the first to the second transducer, are attached to the first transducer; b) for a beam, from the first transducer, causing cavitation, and/or bubble destruction of systemically circulating microbubbles, within the body part; or c) both with the attached elements and for the causing. The apparatus registers, with said first transducer, the second transducer, by using as a reference respectively the features a) and/or b).

Abstract: Ultrasound aberration, especially in transcranial imaging or therapy, is corrected by capturing the laterally two-dimensional nature of the aberration in the ultrasound being received, as by means of a two-dimensional receiving transducer array (104, 108). In some embodiments, transmissive ultrasound (164) is applied through the temporal window and is, for example, emitted from one or more real or virtual point sources (160) at a time, each point source being a single transducer element or patch or the geometrical focus of a collection of elements or patches. A patch may serve, in one aspect as a small focused transducer in the near field. A contralateral array (104, 108) is, in one version, comprised of the point sources.

Abstract: A system (100) and method (400) of acoustic imaging receives an acoustic signal that is scanned to interrogate a target volume within a subject (430), processes the received acoustic signal to produce three-dimensional acoustic image data for a region of interest within the target volume (450); and quantifies the contrast of the three-dimensional acoustic image data in the region of interest at a sampling time that is offset by a selected time period with respect to a time when a contrast enhancement medium is introduced into the subject's circulatory system (480). In one embodiment, quantification is performed by setting an intensity threshold (410), and determining a percentage of voxels of the three-dimensional acoustic image data for the region of interest which have an intensity value greater than the intensity threshold (470).