Analysis of the phased array transducers for surgical applications

In this paper, we analyze the performance of the circular phased array transducers for surgical applications. A phased array transducer focuses and steers an acoustic beam by manipulating the phase delay of each transducer electronically. The quality of the intensity distribution of the phased array transducer is assessed primarily by the production of lesion, the intensity in the region proximal to the focal plane, the presence of grating lobes and other secondary maximum. To analyze the performance of phased array transducers, we have developed a computer simulation model to predict the acoustic field intensity in a 3-dimensional space, study the performance of the phased array transducers with different number of elements, elemental radius, medium attenuation, and gap between each element. We have also analyzed and compared the performance of a circular phased array and a square phased array. From our analysis, we note that a circular phased array with 145 elements and 5 mm diameter per element has the most favorable performance in terms of focusing ability and grating lobes.