Imaging of the destruction of SonoVue microbubbles in ultrasound field

Abstract

The cell membrane permeability to various exogenous molecules can be increased by exposing cells to high intensity ultrasound. It has been shown that the application of contrast agent microbubbles enhances the effectiveness of cell sonoporation. In this study we present the method designed for the imaging of the microbubble destruction in ultrasound field. The method is based on the use of diagnostic ultrasound to obtain Bscan images of the microbubble suspension in the experimental chamber. Exposure of therapeutic ultrasound (0.05 W/cm2) for various time duration resulted in the Bscan image differentiation in greyscale image intensity. By using this setup we revealed that the destruction of microbubbles using 0.05 W/cm2 ultrasound intensity is achieved within 3 seconds. Microbubble destruction by diagnostic ultrasound is much slower and assumed to be negligible, showing that the echoscopy images could be the indicators of microbubble destruction dynamics in the high intensity ultrasound field.