Patent ID: 7645235

Claim:
A non-invasive method for producing a local temperature increase within a body of material using focused sound signals in a target region, wherein the target region comprises a volume situated proximate to the focus of the focused sound signals, said method comprising: generating a sound signal in the target region non-invasively by radiating a sound signal from a sound emitter, which is not a single sinusoidal pressure-time signal, such that a pressure-time course of said sound signal in the target region is non-sinusoidal and such that a magnitude of a pressure amplitude of said sound signal in the target region is larger than an expansion amplitude of said sound signal in the target region; and adapting the pressure-time signal by utilization of non-linear propagation and attenuation properties of the body of material such that the non-invasively produced local temperature increase in the target region of the body of material produced by the adapted pressure-time signal is greater than a temperature increase produced by an emitted single sinusoidal pressure-time signal having the acoustical same power.