Ultrasonic measurements of temperature in materials

Manufacturing processes and product development for industrial and medical applications are submitted to rigorous quality control. Quality assurance may provide accuracy of the physical quantities concerned to guarantee that defects do not arise when the product is developed. Quantities, such as temperature distribution play a significant role and must be monitored to prevent material damage. However, the number of techniques to sense temperature distribution inside a bulk material in a non-invasive and non-ionizing way is rare. Ultrasonic temperature estimation can overcome this issue, providing an alternative technique that matches such requirements to measure heating within materials. Here, we investigate ultrasonic velocity as a function of temperature in metals, polymers gel to mimic soft tissues (phantom), and biological tissues. Through a customized computational algorithm, we successfully estimated the heat source temperature at the surface, and throughout the length of the material. 