Quantitative ultrasound method to detect and monitor laser-induced cavitation bubbles.

An ultrasound technique to measure the spatial and temporal behavior of the laser-induced cavitation bubble is introduced. The cavitation bubbles were formed in water and in gels using a nanosecond pulsed Nd:YAG laser operating at 532 nm. A focused, single-element, 25-MHz ultrasound transducer was employed both to detect the acoustic emission generated by plasma expansion and to acoustically probe the bubble at different stages of its evolution. The arrival time of the passive acoustic emission was used to estimate the location of the cavitation bubble's origin and the time of flight of the ultrasound pulse-echo signal was used to define its spatial extent. The results of ultrasound estimations of the bubble size were compared and found to be in agreement with both the direct optical measurements of the stationary bubble and the theoretical estimates of bubble dynamics derived from the well-known Rayleigh model of a cavity collapse. The results of this study indicate that the proposed quantitative ultrasound technique, capable of detecting and accurately measuring laser-induced cavitation bubbles in water and in a tissue-like medium, could be used in various biomedical and clinical applications.