Temperature Dependent Behavior of Ultrasound Contrast Agents

Quantitative contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging: a review of sources of variability

“…Numerous studies suggest the improved stability of lipid-shelled agents, through better prevention of gas dissolution, over those with a protein shell [100,105,115,116]. Recent studies have demonstrated that changes in bubble population are strongly correlated with the environmental conditions, specifically pressure, temperature and dissolved gas concentration [117]. Laboratory characterization should therefore be performed under conditions as close to those encountered in vivo as possible.…”

Temperature-Dependent Differences in the Nonlinear Acoustic Behavior of Ultrasound Contrast Agents Revealed by High-Speed Imaging and Bulk Acoustics

“…Bulk acoustic scattering measurements Acoustic scattering measurements of bulk microbubble suspensions were performed using the setup previously described in Mulvana et al (2010): 300 ml/L of SonoVue was held in an acoustically transparent vessel at the mutual focus of a pair of single-element, 3.5-MHz transducers with a focal length of 75 mm, 26 dB focal zone measuring 35 mm in length and 1.8 mm in width and full-width-half-maximum, or 26 dB of the power spectrum, bandwidth 2.08-5.72 MHz (Videoscan V380 Panametrics-9NDT, Waltham, MA, USA). One transducer was driven with a series of pulses consisting of a mirrored (up-and-down) pressure ramp of pulseinversion (PI) pairs, with the individual pulses in each case consisting of a two-cycle Gaussian windowed sinusoid with center frequency 3.5 MHz over a pressure range from 50-200 kPa in increments of 50 kPa.…”

“…The influence of temperature on ultrasound contrast agent microbubbles has been considered previously (Guiot et al 2004;MorAvi et al 1997;Mulvana et al 2010;Vos et al 2008). MorAvi et al investigated the effect of temperature on the image intensity of Albunex, an albumin-shelled agent, in vitro and found an increase in video intensity and decrease in agent stability from 8-37 C. Guiot et al also reported an increase in signal intensity for the lipid-shelled agent SonoVue over the temperature range 30-43 C but found good stability for up to an hour.…”

“…More recently, Vos et al reported that single SonoVue microbubbles had a lower pressure threshold for the onset of oscillation at body temperature than at room temperature, and up to two times greater radial oscillation. Previous work by the authors (Mulvana et al 2010) identified the need to assess the assumption that measurements commonly made during laboratory-based investigations of USCAs at room temperature (20 C) may be used to anticipate their behaviour in vivo (37 C). It was found that at a peak negative acoustic excitation pressure of 100 kPa, the bulk attenuation of the contrast agent SonoVue (Bracco Suisse SA, Manno, Lugano, Switzerland) increased by 8.8% (p 5 0.002), whereas the scattered signal was increased by 7.2% (p 5 0.05).…”

Ultrasound assisted particle and cell manipulation on-chip

“…Their ability to act as foci for the release of ultrasound energy has long been established and has led to their exploitation for therapeutic applications [102,107,108]. The huge interest generated by the technique supports a vibrant field of research and significant literature concerning characterisation now exists [109][110][111].…”