Effect of bubble shell nonlinearity on ultrasound nonlinear propagation through microbubble populations

Nonlinear propagation of ultrasound through microbubble populations can generate artifacts and reduce contrast to tissue ratio in ultrasound imaging. The existing propagation model, which underestimates harmonic generation by an order of magnitude, was revised by incorporating a nonlinear constitutive equation for the coating into the description of the microbubble dynamics. Significantly better agreement with experiments was obtained, indicating that coating nonlinearity represents an important contribution to nonlinear propagation of ultrasound in microbubble populations. The results were found to be sensitive to the parameters characterizing the coating nonlinearity and thus accurate measurement of these parameters is required for accurate quantitative predictions. (C) 2011 Acoustical Society of America