Laryngoscope Mounted HIFU Transducer for Visually Guided Oral Cavity Therapies

A laryngoscope mounted high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) transducer for visually guided oral cavity therapies and tongue debulking was designed, built, and evaluated in a series of in-vitro and cadaver clinical workflow studies. The 4MHz, 26×22mm aperture and 30mm focal length prototype proved effective for tissue ablation and mechanically guided positioning within the oral cavity, contacting the base of the tongue through a coupling bolus. Its small size provided ample room for its manipulation to create a volumetric lesion via the superposition of several focal lesions at typical acoustic power levels of 25-30W and 3-5s of sonication time.