| Summary: | High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) can be used to control bleeding, both from individual blood vessels as well as from gross damage to the capillary bed. The presence of vascularity can limit one’s ability to elevate the temperature of blood vessels owing to convective heat transport. In an effort to better understand the heating process in tissues with vascular structure we have developed a numerical simulation that couples models for ultrasound propagation, acoustic streaming, ultrasound heating and blood cooling in Newtonian viscous media. The 3-D simulation allows for the study of complicated biological structures and insonation geometries. We have also undertaken a series of in vitro experiments employing nonuniform flow-through tissue phantoms and designed to provide a ground truth verification of the model predictions. The calculated and measured results were compared over a range of values for insonation pressure, insonation time, and flow rate; we show excellent agreement between predictions and measurements. [Work supported by DARPA and the U.S. Army.]
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