advanced-surgical systems, inc

Company Profile

Advanced Surgical Systems was founded in 1995 to bridge the gap between research and commercial equipment for high power, therapeutic ultrasound. Originally involved in hyperthermia, ablation, and MRI Guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery, the founders of Advanced Surgical Systems were well aware of the lack of commercially available amplifier systems capable of driving ultrasound transducers with the desired power and phase control. This lack of commercial equipment has forced researchers in the field of therapeutic ultrasound to either develop their own driving equipment in-house or pay outrageous prices to connect a series of linear amplifiers. Many researchers have spent much time, money, and effort developing equipment in order to drive their array designs or perform clinical studies. It is the goal of Advanced Surgical Systems to provide a series of commercially available, semi-custom ultrasound driving systems that can meet the strict requirements of accurately and reliably driving high power therapeutic ultrasound transducers.

The core of Advanced Surgical Systems is comprised of a team of engineers experienced in driving single element and multi-element transducers, transducer design, construction, and characterization with piezoceramic and composite materials, RF amplifier design, computer programming and embedded control, the physics of acoustics, and clinical research. The concentration of these skills has resulted in the UDS™ Series Amplifier Systems - semi-custom driving systems that have been specifically designed from the ground up to drive even the most complex transducers.

As the current trend in therapeutic ultrasound is to use phased and/or multi-element arrays, the driving equipment is therefore complex and expensive for researchers to manufacture in-house. When driving many elements, significant tradeoffs exist between the various amplifier designs, the control circuitry, and the software interfacing to the complete system that must be carefully addressed in order to produce a safe, reliable, and accurate system. For transducers with a large number of array elements, the amplifiers must be safe, reliable, and efficient, must occupy a small space, and at the same time produce spectrally pure sine waves. The system control must also be safe and reliable while having the ability to control many amplifier channels simultaneously at a reasonably high speed. The software interfacing must be simple, easy to use, and provide enough flexibility to custom tailor the driving system to the specific application. The combined experience of the Advanced Surgical Systems engineers has resulted in the development of amplifier systems that meet these criteria.

Currently, Advanced Surgical Systems has three main driving system designs: the 500-013, the 500-018, and the 500-009 CSA, a four channel stand alone unit with customizable power and frequency ranges. The first design offers 60 watts of power per channel in the range of 0.8 -1.25 MHz with independent power and phase control, while the second design offers 50 watts per channel in the range of 6-10 MHz with independent frequency and power control. The basic UDS™ design was developed over several years and has been partially financed through an SBIR award. Several different versions of the phased array systems and the frequency systems are described in detail under the amplifier section.

For more information regarding the specifics of the UDS Series system design, refer to the Design Considerations of the UDS™ Series Amplifier Systems document located elsewhere at this site.

Company Direction

At the current time, there are no FDA approved therapies utilizing focused ultrasound for hyperthermia or ablation. As a result, Advanced Surgical Systems' focus has been to develop amplifier systems targeted for therapeutic ultrasound research. The UDS series amplifiers offer the required characteristics for many ultrasound applications, including safety and reliability, at a price far less than it would cost to develop such an extensive system in-house.

However, as the field of therapeutic ultrasound develops, several applications are maturing to the point of FDA approved clinical use. It is the goal of Advanced Surgical Systems to continue developing the ultrasound driving technologies by working with other small companies developing specific therapies in order to supply emerging clinical systems with the highest performing custom and semi-custom designed amplifiers capable of driving therapeutic ultrasound transducers.

Currently, Advanced Surgical Systems is registered with the city of Cambridge as a manufacturer.  To improve its ability to manufacture quality systems that will be approved for clinical use, Advanced Surgical Systems is implementing GMP/QS and ISO procedures, and it is the goal of the company to become fully compliant in order to manufacture and distribute clinical systems both in the U.S. and worldwide.