The study of ultrasonic layer-matched to penetrate bone

Acoustic metamaterial layer-matched was designed to enhance ultrasound penetration through bones. The conventional ultrasound layer-matched, known as coupling agent, can only enhance the transmittance of ultrasound to soft biological media, such as cartilage and muscle, but cannot penetrate hard media, i.e. bone. An ultrasound layer-matched based on the impedance matching principle is presented to make ultrasound penetrate bone, which parameters are designed by acoustic metamaterial equivalent parameter technique. The ultrasound layer-matched is fabricated by 3D printing which can correct the aberrations of the bone. Some configurations are investigated by numerical simulation as well as experiments in the anechoic chamber. In particular, a bone matching layer can be designed optimally for the definite thickness of the bone and the definite operating frequency of the ultrasound probe, which enhanced ultrasound to penetrate both of the layer-matched and the bone with no echo. The results of experiments and simulations show that the proposed ultrasound layer-matched metamaterial can enhance the transmission efficiency of ultrasound to penetrate some hard biological media bones.