Thin catheter bending in arbitrary direction using tempo-spatial variation of acoustic distribution

Abstract

Although we have already experimented to bend a thin catheter with acoustic radiation force using a single transducer, it is necessary to develop a method to bend a catheter to an arbitrary direction because installation position of ultrasound transducers on body surface is limited to adopt to various shape of in vivo blood vessel. Therefore, we examined to bend the thin catheter to the perpendicular direction to ultrasound propagation using a 2-dimensional array transducer, which realizes not only the tempo-spatial design but also dynamic variation of acoustic field. Forming two focal points with opposite phase, we have confirmed the phenomena to bent a thin catheter to the perpendicular direction to ultrasound propagation. From the results, the acoustic energy density in front and behind of the catheter is dominant for the performance bending thin catheter independent of ultrasound propagation.