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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2005

Creating antibubbles with ultrasound

Résumé

Ultrasound contrast agents have been investigated for their potential applications in local drug and gene delivery. A microbubble might act as the vehicle to carry a drug or gene load to a perfused region of interest. The load has to be released with the assistance of ultrasound. We investigate the suitability of antibubbles for ultrasound-assisted local delivery. As opposed to bubbles, antibubbles consist of a liquid core surrounded by a gas encapsulation. Incorporating a liquid drop containing drugs or genes inside an ultrasound contrast agent microbubble, however, is technically challenging. An ultrasound-insonified microbubble generates a pressure field that is inversely proportional to the distance from the microbubble. Therefore, an oscillating contrast agent microbubble may create a surface instability with a relatively big bubble at a short distance. For big enough instabilities, a drop may be formed inside the big bubble. Three different contrast agents were subjected to 0.5 MHz ultrasound, with mechanical indices >0.6. The contrast agents were inserted through an artificial capillary which led through the acoustic focus of the transducer. High-speed photographs were captured at a speed of 3 million frames per second and higher. We observed that ultrasound contrast microbubbles below resonance size may create visible surface instabilities with bubbles above resonance size. With an albumin-shelled contrast agent, we induced a surface instability that was big enough to create an antibubble inside a free (unencapsulated) gas bubble with an 8 micron diameter. The surface instability has been attributed to the presence of a contrast microbubble with a 3 micron diameter. This instability has the form of a re-entrant jet protruding into the gas bubble. The inward protrusion grew and subsequently drained, leaving a droplet with a five micron diameter inside the bubble. In a subsequent recording after 100 ms, only the gas bubble could be detected. Thus, the lifetime of the antibubble was less then 100 ms. The presence of a surfactant on the interfaces might lead to an improved stability of an antibubble.
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Dates et versions

hal-03193369 , version 1 (11-04-2021)

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Michiel Postema, Nico de Jong, Georg Schmitz, Annemieke van Wamel. Creating antibubbles with ultrasound. IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium, 2005., 2005, Rotterdam, Netherlands. pp.977-980, ⟨10.1109/ULTSYM.2005.1603013⟩. ⟨hal-03193369⟩
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