Smith, E orcid.org/0000-0003-1559-2400, Nie, L orcid.org/0000-0002-5796-907X, McLaughlan, J orcid.org/0000-0001-5795-4372 et al. (6 more authors) (2022) An Open Access Chamber Designed for the Acoustic Characterisation of Microbubbles. Applied Sciences, 12 (4). 1818. ISSN 2076-3417
Abstract
Microbubbles are used as contrast agents in clinical ultrasound for Left Ventricular Opacification (LVO) and perfusion imaging. They are also the subject of promising research in therapeutics as a drug delivery mechanism or for sonoporation and co-administration. For maximum efficacy in these applications, it is important to understand the acoustic characteristics of the administered microbubbles. Despite this, there is significant variation in the experimental procedures and equipment used to measure the acoustic properties of microbubble populations. A chamber was designed to facilitate acoustic characterisation experiments and was manufactured using additive manufacturing techniques. The design has been released to allow wider uptake in the research community. The efficacy of the chamber for acoustic characterisation has been explored with an experiment to measure the scattering of SonoVue® microbubbles at the fundamental frequency and second harmonic under interrogation from emissions in the frequency range of 1.6 to 6.4 MHz. The highest overall scattering values were measured at 1.6 MHz and decreased as the frequency increased, a result which is in agreement with previously published measurements. Statistical analysis of the acoustic scattering measurements have been performed and a significant difference, at the 5% significance level, was found between the samples containing contrast agent and the control sample containing only deionised water. These findings validate the proposed design for measuring the acoustic scattering characteristics of ultrasound contrast agents.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | ultrasound; contrast agent; microbubble; acoustic characterisation; scattering; drug delivery |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Computing (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering (Leeds) > Robotics, Autonomous Systems & Sensing (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) > Molecular & Nanoscale Physics |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Feb 2022 13:02 |
Last Modified: | 25 Feb 2022 13:02 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/app12041818 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:184091 |