Analysis of cooling effect by blood vessel on temperature rise due to ultrasound radiation in tissue phantom

Abstract

Ultrasound diagnostic equipment using ultrasound pulse–echo techniques is considered minimally invasive and highly versatile. However, one of the causes of damage due to ultrasound radiation is temperature rise caused by the absorption of sound energy. Therefore, it is very important to estimate the temperature rise caused by the radiation of ultrasound. Sound intensity in a medium is analyzed by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, and the temperature distribution caused by sound is estimated by the heat conduction equation (HCE) method in this study. Because blood vessels keep the temperature constant in tissues, the cooling effect of blood flow has to be taken into account for the precise estimation of temperature rise in human tissues. In general, it is well known that capillary vessels are mainly responsible for the cooling effect in tissues and their effect can be estimated as a function of bloodstream ratio. In this paper, a preliminary study on the cooling effect by a large vessel is described for the precise estimation of temperature rise. Blood flow in blood vessels is analyzed using the Navier–Stokes equation. To confirm the precision of the numerical analysis, the results of the numerical analysis are compared with the experimental results using a soft tissue phantom.