Difference-frequency ultrasound generation from microbubbles under dual-frequency excitation

The difference-frequency (DF) ultrasound generated by using parametric effect promises to improve detection depth owing to its low attenuation, which is beneficial for deep tissue imaging. With ultrasound contrast agents infusion, the harmonic components scattered from the microbubbles, including DF, can be generated due to the nonlinear vibration. A theoretical study on the DF generation from microbubbles under the dual-frequency excitation is proposed in formula based on the solution of the RPNNP equation. The optimisation of the DF generation is discussed associated with the applied acoustic pressure, frequency, and the microbubble size. Experiments are performed to validate the theoretical predictions by using a dual-frequency signal to excite microbubbles. Both the numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the optimised DF ultrasound can be achieved as the difference frequency is close to the resonance frequency of the microbubble and improve the contrast-to-tissue ratio in imaging.     

The viscoelasticity of lipid shell and the hysteresis of subharmonic in liquid containing microbubbles

The viscoelasticity and subharmonic generation of a kind of lipid ultrasound contrast agent are investigated. Based on the measurement of the sound attenuation spectrum, the viscoelasticity of the lipid shell is estimated by use of an optimization method. Shear modulus Gs=10MPa and shear viscosity μs=1.49N.S/m^2 are obtained. The nonlinear oscillation of the encapsulated microbubble is studied with Church＇s model theoretically and experimentally. Especially, the dependence of subharmonic on the incident acoustic pressure is studied. The results reveal that the development of the subharmonic undergoes three stages, i.e. occurrence, growth and saturation, and that hysteresis appears in descending ramp insonation.     

Asymmetric Oscillation and Acoustic Response from an Encapsulated Microbubble Bound within a Small Vessel

Understanding the dynamics of ultrasonic excited microbubbles bound within microvessels is of significance for novel ultrasonic imaging, drug delivery and therapeutic biomedicad applications. A finite element model （FEM） considering acoustic nonlinearity is developed to describe the asymmetric oscillation and acoustic response from mn encapsulated microbubble bound within a small vessel. Numerical simulation is performed for a 2 μm encapsulated microbubble bound within 8-20μm vessels using 2 MHz ultrasound excitation. The oscillation of the bound microbubble becomes more asymmetric under larger ultrasound pressure or within the smaller vessel. The normalized difference between the major and minor axes of epllipse is estimated to be 2.16%for the 8 μm vessel at an acoustic pressure of 0.5 MPa. In addition, the fundamental component of the acoustic scattering from the bound microbubble is enhanced by 6 dB while the second harmonic component is decreased by approximately 29 dB compared with the free microbubble.     

Analysis of characteristics of sound radiation from double cylindrical shell coated with viscoelastic layer

The characteristics of vibration and sound radiation from a double shell with the outer shell coated with viscoelastic layer are systematically studied. The shell‘s motion function is expressed by the classical Fliigge operator and the layer‘s motion function is described by three-dimensional Navier equations, whose displacement solutions are expressed by Taylor expansion along the layer thickness. The continuity conditions of displacement and stress between the shell and the layers are used in obtaining the vibration equations. The effects of layer thickness, modulus of elasticity, the loss factor, and the hydro-compressibility on the structural acoustic characteristic are discussed in detail. It showed that the higher the modulus of elasticity is, or the thinner the thickness of layer is, or the smaller the loss factor is, the higher the sound radiation power is.     

Influence of roughness on the detection of mechanical characteristics of low-k film by the surface acoustic waves

The surface acoustic wave （SAW） technique is a precise and nondestructive method to detect the mechanical charac- teristics of the thin low dielectric constant （low-k） film by matching the theoretical dispersion curve with the experimental dispersion curve. In this paper, the influence of sample roughness on the precision of SAW mechanical detection is inves- tigated in detail. Random roughness values at the surface of low-k film and at the interface between this low-k film and the substrate are obtained by the Monte Carlo method. The dispersive characteristic of SAW on the layered structure with rough surface and rough interface is modeled by numerical simulation of finite element method. The Young＇s moduli of the Black DiamondTM samples with different roughness values are determined by SAWs in the experiment. The results show that the influence of sample roughness is very small when the root-mean-square （RMS） of roughness is smaller than 50 nm and correlation length is smaller than 20 μm. This study indicates that the SAW technique is reliable and precise in the nondestructive mechanical detection for low-k films.     

Statistical properties of ultrasound speckles reflected from an interface

The first- and second-order statistical properties of ultrasound -speckles reflected from an interface are studied theoretically and experimentally. A theoretical model for predicting statistical properties of ultrasound speckles is constructed based on the Fresnel-Huygens principle and three basic assumptions. Distributions of amplitude and phase of ultrasound speckles in a scattering space are studied. And the study shows that they are in the form of Rayleigh and uniform distribution respectively. Using the proposed model, the average transverse size of the speckles within a scattering domain which are received by a focus probe is investigated. The average transverse size is found to be dependent on the characteristics of the measuring system only, and does not vary with the position in the domain. To verify the applicability of the theoretical model, a special experimental set-up was designed and the corresponding experiments were conducted for measuring the sound pressure of the ultrasound speckles     

Correlation between microbubble-induced acoustic cavitation and hemolysis in vitro

Microbubbles promise to enhance the efficiency of ultrasound-mediated drug delivery and gene therapy by taking advantage of artificial cavitation nuclei.The purpose of this study is to examine the ultrasound-induced hemolysis in the application of drug delivery in the presence of microbubbles.To achieve this goal,human red blood cells mixed with microbubbles were exposed to 1-MHz pulsed ultrasound.The hemolysis level was measured by a flow cytometry,and the cavitation dose was detected by a passive cavitation detecting system.The results demonstrate that larger cavitation dose would be generated with the increase of acoustic pressure,which might give rise to the enhancement of hemolysis.Besides the experimental observations,the acoustic pressure dependence of the radial oscillation of microbubble was theoretically estimated.The comparison between the experimental and calculation results indicates that the hemolysis should be highly correlated to the acoustic cavitation.     

Experimental demonstration of a three-dimensional omnidirectional and broadband acoustic concentrator using an anisotropic metamaterial

We report the theoretical design and experimental demonstration of a three-dimensional(3D)omnidirectional and broadband metamaterial-based concentrator for airborne sound.The proposed mechanism uses a homogeneous anisotropic acoustic metamaterial with an ellipsoidal equifrequency contour to efficiently redirect the acoustic energy impinging on its outer surface into the central region,regardless of the incident direction.A design of the metamaterial unit cell is proposed as a practical implementation of our strategy,which is simply realized by perforating a solid spherical shell with a linearly shrinking cross section in the radial direction.We analytically and numerically prove that the non-resonant anisotropic effective acoustic parameters required for building the concentrator are produced with such a design.Good agreement is observed between the theoretical predictions and experimental measurements.An effective concentration of the incident acoustic energy is observed within a broadband that ranges 1000-1600 Hz.The experimental realization of this 3D acoustic concentrator with a simple design,low energy loss,replaceable constituent material,and omnidirectional and broadband functionality offers new possibilities for acoustic manipulations and may have important applications in a plethora of scenarios ranging from energy harvesting to noise mitigation.     

Boundary normal pressure-based electrical conductivity reconstruction for magneto–acoustic tomography with magnetic induction

As a kind of multi-physics imaging approach integrating the advantages of electrical impedance tomography and ultrasound imaging with the improved spatial resolution and image contrast, magneto–acoustic tomography with magnetic induction(MAT-MI) is demonstrated to have the capability of electrical impedance contrast imaging for biological tissues with conductivity differences. By being detected with a strong directional transducer, abrupt pressure change is proved to be generated by the gradient of the induced Lorentz force along the force direction at conductivity boundary. A simplified boundary normal pressure(BNP)-based conductivity reconstruction algorithm is proposed and the formula for conductivity distribution inside the object with the clear physical meaning of pressure derivative, is derived. Numerical simulations of acoustic pressure and conductivity reconstruction are conducted based on a 2-layer eccentric cylindrical phantom model using Hilbert transform. The reconstructed two-dimensional conductivity images accord well with the model, thus successfully making up the deficiency of only imaging conductivity boundary in traditional MAT-MI. The proposed method is also demonstrated to have a spatial resolution of one wavelength. This study provides a new method of reconstructing accurate electrical conductivity and suggests the potential applications of MAT-MI in imaging biological tissues with conductivity difference.