Integration of percutaneous cardiac catheter for HIFU ablation and image guidance

Image-guided high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is widely used not only for non-invasive therapy but also as a precise approach for cardiac tissue ablation. However, most HIFU systems use piezoelectric transducers, which are typically bulky due to active cooling, and separate imaging and HIFU transducers, and therefore impractical for catheter-based applications. Taking advantage of a single 2-D capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array, we developed a percutaneous cardiac catheter that can switch between ultrasound imaging mode and HIFU ablation mode.