ETD

• ARFI
• HIFU
• Ultrasound

High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is a new promising technology used for cancer treatment. It is a non – invasive technique and uses non – ionizing radiations, preserving in this way the health of the patient under treatment. HIFU devices need to be coupled to a robust imaging device. Magnetic resonance has been preferred to ultrasound (US) imaging so far because it seems to be more precise. However, US imaging could be a good alternative for both economic and patient safety reasons. In particular, elastography was seen to be a promising technology for the diagnosis of tumours and characterization of HIFU induced lesions. In fact, elastography provides an elasticity map of the imaged tissue, so both tumours and HIFU induced lesions are visible since they show different elasticity properties compared to the surrounding healthy tissue. In this work Acoustic Radiation Force Imaging (ARFI) and Shear Wave Elastographic Imaging (SWEI or SWI) have been studied in order to be performed in an US platform developed during the European project FUTURA. The preliminary tests did not give any robust results. Consequently, a characterization not only of the geometric and electronic parameters of the system, but also of the properties of different tested phantoms was done for a better understanding of the main causes related to the failure of ARFI and SWI implementation on FUTURA platform.