Acoustic field modeling of focused ultrasound transducers using non-uniform radiation distributions

Focused ultrasound can be applied from low intensity ultrasound for non-thermal therapy as drug deliver, gene therapy, etc. to high intensity ultrasound for tumor ablation in oncology. However, to have an adequate therapy planning, it is required to fully understand the parameters affecting the acoustic field produced by concave radiators. Traditional ideal models usually do not produce adequate results when high intensity applications are used. In this paper, it is proposed the use of non-uniform radiation distribution in the surface of a curved radiator to get better approximations to the field produced by real focused transducers; these non-uniform distributions, namely, the simply supported and clamped radiator, have been proposed for planar transducers in recent works. These new approaches permitted to get better acoustic fields for focused transducers that can be more effective in posterior studies when the determination of the effects of ultrasound in tissues is required.