Breaking the Skull Barrier: Parametric Arrays for Transcranial FUS Monitoring

Overview

Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) therapy holds enormous promise for non-invasive treatment of neurological disorders, but real-time monitoring through the skull remains a fundamental challenge. This work introduces a novel parametric array approach that exploits nonlinear self-demodulation to generate low-frequency monitoring signals capable of penetrating the skull with minimal distortion.

Key Contributions

• Developed the Heterogeneous Angular Spectrum Parametric Array (HASPA) framework — a fast, GPU-accelerated simulation tool for modeling nonlinear wave propagation through skull bone.
• Demonstrated that parametric array signals preserve spatial information about the therapeutic focus even after traversing heterogeneous skull layers.
• Proposed a dual-use paradigm: the same therapeutic transducer array generates both the treatment beam and the self-demodulated monitoring signal.

Methods & Tools

• Nonlinear acoustic simulation (Westervelt equation, KZK equation)
• GPU-accelerated heterogeneous angular spectrum propagation
• Multi-channel Verasonics data acquisition and beamforming
• Phantom and ex vivo skull experiments

Related Patent

Arvanitis, C. and Dash, P. P., Georgia Tech Research Corp, 2026. Heterogeneous Angular Spectrum Parametric Array (HASPA) Framework for Ultrasound Brain Therapy. USPTO 63/929,300.

Citation

Dash, P. P., & Arvanitis, C. (2025). Breaking the Skull Barrier: Parametric Array Enable Non-Invasive Monitoring of Transcranial Focused Ultrasound Therapy.