Medical Ultrasonography - Therapeutic Applications

Therapeutic Applications

Therapeutic applications use ultrasound to bring heat or agitation into the body. Therefore much higher energies are used than in diagnostic ultrasound. In many cases the range of frequencies used are also very different.

• Ultrasound is sometimes used to clean teeth in dental hygiene.
• Ultrasound sources may be used to generate regional heating and mechanical changes in biological tissue, e.g. in occupational therapy, physical therapy and cancer treatment. However the use of ultrasound in the treatment of musculoskeletal conditions has fallen out of favor.
• Focused ultrasound may be used to generate highly localized heating to treat cysts and tumors (benign or malignant), This is known as Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) or High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU). These procedures generally use lower frequencies than medical diagnostic ultrasound (from 0.250 to 2 MHz), but significantly higher energies. HIFU treatment is often guided by MRI.
• Focused ultrasound may be used to break up kidney stones by lithotripsy.
• Ultrasound may be used for cataract treatment by phacoemulsification.
• Additional physiological effects of low-intensity ultrasound have recently been discovered, e.g. its ability to stimulate bone-growth and its potential to disrupt the blood–brain barrier for drug delivery.
• Procoagulant at 5–12 MHz,