Dependence of ablative ability of high-intensity focused ultrasound cavitation-based histotripsy on mechanical properties of agar.

Cavitation-based histotripsy uses high-intensity focused ultrasound at low duty factor to create bubble clouds inside tissue to liquefy a region, and provides better fidelity to planned lesion coordinates and the ability to perform real-time monitoring. The goal of this study was to identify the most important mechanical properties for predicting lesion dimensions, among these three: Young's modulus, bending strength, and fracture toughness. Lesions were generated inside tissue-mimicking agar, and correlations were examined between the mechanical properties and the lesion dimensions, quantified by lesion volume and by the width and length of the equivalent bubble cluster. Histotripsy was applied to agar samples with varied properties. A cuboid of 4.5 mm width (lateral to focal plane) and 6 mm depth (along beam axis) was scanned in a raster pattern with respective step sizes of 0.75 and 3 mm. The exposure at each treatment location was either 15, 30, or 60 s. Results showed that only Young's modulus influenced histotripsy's ablative ability and was significantly correlated with lesion volume and bubble cluster dimensions. The other two properties had negligible effects on lesion formation. Also, exposure time differentially affected the width and depth of the bubble cluster volume.