A closer look at ultrasonic attenuation in a tissue-mimicking material

A well-characterized ultrasound tissue-mimicking material (TMM) can be important in determining the acoustic output and temperature rise from high intensity therapeutic ultrasound (HITU) devices and also in validating computer simulation models. A HITU TMM previously developed and characterized in our laboratory has been used in our acoustic and temperature measurements as well as modeled in our HITU simulation program. A discrepancy between the thermal measurement and simulation, though, led us to further investigate the TMM properties. We found that the 2-parameter analytic fit commonly used to represent the attenuation of the TMM in the computer modeling was not adequate over the entire frequency range of interest, 1 MHz to 8 MHz in this study, indicating that we and others may have not been characterizing TMMs, and possibly tissue, optimally. By comparing measurements and simulations, we found that a 3-parameter analytic fit for attenuation gave a more accurate value for attenuation at 1 MHz and 2 MHz. When using a 3-parameter fit, the temperature rise measurements in the FDA TMM agreed more closely with the simulation results.