Abstract
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) is applied in therapeutic and surgical medical interventions such as for tissue ablation in cancer treatment and in benign prostatic hyperplasia. Its application frontier has moved towards the treatment of deep-seated tumors such as in the liver and brain, but is discouraged by acoustic energy loss on the path deep into body. One promising solution is to inject microbubbles, such as ultrasonic contrast agents, in the target region to enhance target tissue heating via bubble dynamics. To accelerate the clinical transition of this noninvasive and target therapy, further understanding of microbubble-enhanced HIFU acoustic and thermal fields is essential to predict the bio-effects of the HIFU on the target tissue and its surroundings and for the development of standards to ensure the safety and efficacy of the treatments. For this purpose, a two-way coupled Euler-Lagrange computational tool, 3DYNAFSHIFU, has been developed to enable accurate characterization of acoustic and thermal fields for microbubble-enhanced HIFU. This paper summarizes the main features of its numerical algorithms for accuracy and HPC schemes for speedup, followed by its preliminary validation against in-vitro experiments and further evaluation under ex-vivo settings. This contribution spotlights the future of seeking mechanical solutions as a powerful and safe alternative to the existing chemical and/or ionizing therapies to treat tumors.
