Ultrasound is a type of sound wave which has frequency higher than the human hearing frequency range. Historically, ultrasound was used in medical treatment after the end of World War II. The most important component of the ultrasound diagnosis machine is the transducer, which is used to both produce and detect ultrasound. There is a piezoelectric material (usually made of quartz crystal or ceramic) inside the transducer. When a piezoelectric material connected in a closed circuit applied with an electric field, a series of mechanical expansion and contraction. The crystal will start to vibrate in a frequency equivalent to the frequency of ultrasound. Conversely, when the ultrasound is detected …show more content…
But for non-normal incidence, the reflected angle will be equal to the incident angle, and refraction will also occur. The direction of the incident beam will be changed as soon as it passes through the boundary between two mediums. Both reflection and refraction will result in scattering. The beam can diffuse in many different directions due to the interaction with those small particles within the tissue medium. This will give rise to the characteristic texture and gray scale in the acoustic image. The loss of intensity of the ultrasound beam is due to absorption of the tissue and the scattering by the small particles. The energy of the beam is more attenuated as the depth traveled increases. The equation I=I_0 e^(-μx) can be used to describe this phenomenon, where I_0 is the intensity incident on the surface of tissue and the I represents the intensity at a depth x into the …show more content…
However, the biological effects caused by high intensity ultrasound are not ignorable, which can be divided into thermal mechanisms and mechanical mechanisms. When the ultrasound is travelled through the tissue, its energy absorbed by the tissue will be converted into thermal energy, i.e. heat. Thus, at all parts of the ultrasonic field in the tissue, heat will be generated, which can cause damage onto a few of human organs. The generation of heat by ultrasound attenuation depends not only on the heat deposition rate in a particular zone inside the human body, but also on how fast the heat can be transferred by blood flow. Heat deposition is not only affected by the intensity of the ultrasound, but also by the absorption coefficient, u, of the tissue. Different tissue types have different values of absorption coefficient, for example, the attenuation of bone is relatively higher than other soft tissues thus heat deposition is fairly significant at a bone-tissue interface. In fact, it can be considered potentially harmful if the heating effect is typically well below a temperature rise, for example, one to two degrees