In view of the discrete characteristics of biological tissue, doublet mechanics has demonstrated its advantages in the mathematic description of tissue in terms of high frequency （〉 10 MHz） ultrasound. In this paper, we take human breast biopsies as an example to study the influence of the internodal distance, a microscope parameter in biological tissue in doublet mechanics, on the sound velocity and attenuation by numerical simulation. The internodal distance causes the sound velocity and attenuation in biological tissue to change with the increase of frequency. The magnitude of such a change in pathological tissue is distinctly different from that in normal tissue, which can be used to differentiate pathological tissue from normal tissue and can depict the diseased tissue structure by obtaining the sound and attenuation distribution in the sample at high ultrasound frequency. A comparison of sensitivity between the doublet model and conventional continuum model is made, indicating that this is a new method of characterizing ultrasound tissue and diagnosing diseases.
The acoustic wave propagation from a two-dimensional subwavelength slit surrounded by metal plates decorated with Helmholtz resonators （HRs） is investigated both numerically and experimentally in this work. Owing to the presence of HRs, the effective impedance of metal surface boundary can be manipulated. By optimizing the distribution of HRs, the asymmetric effective impedance boundary will be obtained, which contributes to generating tunable acoustic radiation pattern such as directional acoustic beaming. These dipole-like radiation patterns have high radiation efficiency, no finger- print of sidelobes, and a wide tunable range of the radiation pattern directivity angle which can be steered by the spatial displacements of HRs.
Acoustical tweezer is a primary application of the radiation force of a sound field. When an ultrasound focused beam passes through a micro-particle, like a cell or living biological specimens, the particle will be manipulated accurately without physical contact and invasion, due to the three-dimensional acoustical trapping force. Based on the Ray acoustics approach in the Mie regime, this work discusses the effects on the particle caused by Gaussian focused ultrasound, studies the acoustical trapping force of spherical Mie particles by ultrasound in any position, and analyzes the numerical calculation on the two-dimensional acoustical radiation force. This article also analyzes the conditions for the acoustical trapping phenomenon, and discusses the impact of the initial position and size of the particle on the magnitude of the acoustical radiation force. Furthermore, this paper considers the ultrasonic attenuation in a particle in the case of two-dimension, studies the attenuation's effects on the acoustical trapping force, and amends the calculation to the ordinary case with attenuation.
Solid materials with cracks exhibit the nonclassical nonlinear acoustical behavior. The micro-defects in solid materials can be detected by nonlinear elastic wave spectroscopy （NEWS） method with a time-reversal （TR） mirror. While defects lie in viscoelastic solid material with different distances from one another, the nonlinear and hysteretic stress-strain relation is established with Preisach-Mayergoyz （PM） model in crack zone. Pulse inversion （PI） and TR methods are used in numerical simulation and defect locations can be determined from images obtained by the maximum value. Since false-positive defects might appear and degrade the imaging when the defects are located quite closely, the maximum value imaging with a time window is introduced to analyze how defects affect each other and how the fake one occurs. Furthermore, NEWS-TR- NEWS method is put forward to improve NEWS-TR scheme, with another forward propagation （NEWS） added to the existing phases （NEWS and TR）. In the added phase, scanner locations are determined by locations of all defects imaged in previous phases, so that whether an imaged defect is real can be deduced. NEWS-TR-NEWS method is proved to be effective to distinguish real defects from the false-positive ones. Moreover, it is also helpful to detect the crack that is weaker than others during imaging procedure.
We used the spheroidal beam equation to calculate the sound field created by focusing a transducer with a wide aperture angle to obtain the heat deposition, and then we used the Pennes bioheat equation to calculate the temperature field in biological tissue with ribs and to ascertain the effects of rib parameters on the temperature field. The results show that the location and the gap width between the ribs have a great influence on the axial and radial temperature rise of multilayer biological tissue. With a decreasing gap width, the location of the maximum temperature rise moves forward; as the ribs are closer to the transducer surface, the sound energy that passes through the gap between the ribs at the focus decreases, the maximum temperature rise decreases, and the location of the maximum temperature rise moves forward with the ribs.
With converged shock wave, extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy（ESWL） has become a preferable way to crush human calculi because of its advantages of efficiency and non-intrusion. Nonlinear spheroidal beam equations（SBE） are employed to illustrate the acoustic wave propagation for transducers with a wide aperture angle. To predict the acoustic field distribution precisely, boundary conditions are obtained for the SBE model of the monochromatic wave when the source is located on the focus of an ESWL transducer. Numerical results of the monochromatic wave propagation in water are analyzed and the influences of half-angle, fundamental frequency, and initial pressure are investigated. According to our results, with optimization of these factors, the pressure focal gain of ESWL can be enhanced and the effectiveness of treatment can be improved.
