Effect of tissue viscoelasticity and adjacent phase-changed microbubbles on vaporization process and direct growth threshold of nanodroplet in an ultrasonic field.

Understanding the behavior of nanodroplets converted into microbubbles with applied ultrasound is an important problem in tumor therapeutical and diagnostic applications. In this study, a comprehensive model is proposed to investigate the vaporization process and the direct growth threshold of the nanodroplet by following the vapor bubble growth, especially attention devoted to the effect of tissue viscoelasticity and adjacent phase-changed microbubbles (PCMBs). It is shown that the ultrasonic energy must be sufficiently strong to counterbalance the natural condensation of the vapor bubble and the tissue stiffness-inhibitory effect. The softer tissue with a lower shear modulus favors the vaporization process, and the nanodroplet has a lower direct growth threshold in the softer tissue. Moreover, the adjacent PCMBs show a suppression effect on the vaporization process due to the negative value of the secondary Bjerknes force, implying an attractive force, preventing the nanodroplet from escaping from the constraint of the adjacent PCMBs. However, according to the linear scattering theory, the attractive force signifies that the constraint is weak, causing the direct growth threshold to increase in the range of 0.09-0.24 MPa. The weak increase in threshold demonstrates that the direct growth threshold is relatively unaffected by the adjacent PCMBs. The prediction results of our model are in good agreement with the experiment results obtained by the echo enhancement method, in which the threshold is relatively independent of the intermediate concentration. The findings presented here provide physical insight that will be further helpful in understanding the complex behavior of the nanodroplet responses to ultrasound in practical medical applications.

Interaction between particles and bubbles driven by ultrasound: Acoustic radiation force on an elastic particle immersed in the ideal fluid near a bubble.

A theoretical model is proposed to investigate the acoustic radiation force on the elastic particle for coupled particle-bubble system. Based on the sound scattering theory, an analytical expression of the force function is obtained for the particle in plane wave sound field. Numerical simulations are presented for elastic particle of stainless steel, steel or brass. The results reveal that the presence of bubbles can affect the feature of radiation force curves of particles. The force curve fluctuates, and negative force emerges in the small kR1 region for certain distance between the bubble and particle. There are more sharp peaks and dips in the curves because of the resonance of the elasticity of the system and the resonant peaks of the acoustic radiation force transfer to low frequencies when the size of elastic particle is increased. The approximate positive flat region is shortened because of the presence of bubble, which may help to optimize the size ranges of particle for acoustic screening. This study provides for improvement of the acoustic manipulation theoretical model.