The optical tweezer has been found to have many biomedical applications in trapping macromolecules and cells. For the trapping mechanism, there has to be a sharp spatial change in axial optical intensity and the particle size must be much greater than the wavelength. Similar phenomenon may exist in acoustics. This work was undertaken to demonstrate theoretically that it is possible to acoustically trap particles near the focal point where most of the acoustic energy is concentrated if certain conditions are met. Acoustic force exerted on a fluid particle in ultrasonic fields is analyzed in a ray acoustics regime where the wavelength of acoustic beam is much smaller than the size of the particle. In order to apply the acoustical tweezer to manipulating macromolecules and cells whose size is in the order of a few microns or less, a prerequisite is that the ultrasound wavelength has to be much smaller than a few microns. In this paper, the analysis is therefore based on the field pattern produced by a strongly focused 100 MHz ultrasonic transducer with Gaussian intensity distribution. For the realization of acoustic trapping, negative axial radiation force has to be generated to pull a particle towards a focus. The fat particle considered for acoustic trapping in this paper has an acoustic impedance of 1.4 MRayls. The magnitude of the acoustic axial radiation force that has been calculated as the size of the fat particle is varied from 8lambda to 14lambda. In addition, both Fresnel coefficients at various positions are also calculated to assess the interaction of reflection and refraction and their relative contribution to the effect of the acoustical tweezer. The simulation results show that the feasibility of the acoustical tweezer depends on both the degree of acoustic impedance mismatch and the degree of focusing relative to the particle size.
The feasibility of photoacoustic imaging (PAI) application was evaluated to map punctured blood vessels thermally treated by high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for hemostasis. A single-element HIFU transducer with a central frequency of 2.0 MHz, was used to induce thermal hemostasis on the punctured arteries. The HIFU-treated lesion was imaged and localized by high-contrast PAI guidance. The results showed that complete hemostasis was achieved after treatment of the damaged blood vessels within 25 to 52 s at the acoustic intensity of 3600 W/cm 2 . The coagulation time for the animal artery was ∼20% longer than that of the phantom possibly due to a lower Young’s modulus. The reconstructed PA images were able to distinguish the treated area from the surrounding tissue in terms of augmented signal amplitudes (up to three times). Spectroscopic studies demonstrated that the optimal imaging wavelength was found to be 700 nm in order to reconstruct high-contrast photoacoustic images on HIFU-treated lesions. The proposed PAI integrated with HIFU treatment can be a feasible application to obtain safe and rapid hemostasis for acute arterial bleeding.
We have generated planar blast waves over the large area using carbon nanotubes(CNT)-poly-dimethylsiloxane(PDMS) optoacoustic transducer. Pulse laser is absorbed by CNT and converted to heat, and the heat is transferred to PDMS inducing its thermal expansion and blast wave generation. To theoretically describe the planar blast wave generation, we build one-dimensional simulation model and find analytical solutions for temperature and pressure distributions. The analytical solution validated by the experimental data sheds light on how to improve the performance of the new transducer. Resonance of acoustic waves inside the transducer is also discussed. The new optoacoustic transducer optimized based on the fundamental understandings will be useful in generating high quality blast waves for research and industrial applications.
In this study, in order to determine the positions where microparticles are trapped in a cylindrical standing wave field, we derived equations giving the radiation force and potential energy distribution. Then, the trapped pattern and its variation with time in a hollow cylindrical transducer were simulated. The simulation results showed that polystyrene particles moved to and aggregated near positions corresponding to pressure nodes, which were estimated from the derived equations. These were confirmed by measurement. In addition, it was demonstrated that biological particles of the green algae chlorella show similar trapping phenomena to polystyrene particles.
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