Use of a fibre-optic hydrophone in measuring acoustic parameters of high power hyperthermia transducers

A fibre-optic hydrophone consisting of a polarisation-maintaining fibre carrying light from a laser source has been used to measure the acoustic output parameters of a single focused hyperthermia transducer and a six-transducer assembly. Beam profiles of the transducers were measured using the fibre-optic hydrophone and the results compared with those obtained using a PVDF hydrophone. The acoustic power output from the hyperthermia transducer was measured using a radiation force balance. It was observed that the root mean square voltage of the fibre-optic hydrophone output is proportional to the square root of the acoustic power up to more than 80 W. It was also observed that, under continuous-wave operation, the fibre optic hydrophone can stand up to very high power (more than 200 W) without being damaged. As its sensing element is the fibre itself, whose diameter is considerably narrower than the width of the ultrasonic beam, it can provide resolution of about 80 microm in beam profile measurement. The fibre is a line sensor and a computer tomographic technique is used to recover the pressure profile from the hydrophone output voltage. In typical clinical operations, the six-transducer assembly is driven with less than 150 W of electrical power input. In such cases, each individual transducer receives less than 25 W of input power and non-linearity and generation of high frequency harmonics at the focus is not a significant problem.