New piezoelectric transducers for therapeutic ultrasound

Therapeutic ultrasound (US) has been of increasing interest during the past few years. However, the development of this technique depends on the avail ability of high-performance transducers. These transducers have to be optim ised for focusing and steering high-power ultrasonic energy within the targ et volume, Recently developed high-power 1-3 piezocomposite materials bring to therapeutic US the exceptional electroacoustical properties of piezocom posite technology: these are high efficiency, large bandwidth, predictable beam pattern, more flexibility in terms of shaping and definition of sampli ng in annular arrays, linear arrays or matrix arrays. The construction and evaluation of several prototypes illustrates the benefit of this new approa ch that opens the way to further progress in therapeutic US. (C) 2000 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.