Acoustic droplet vaporization for diagnostic and therapeutic applications

A technology, termed Acoustic Droplet Vaporization (ADV), is developed whereby superheated droplets are caused to vaporize by application of an ultrasonic field. The droplet emulsion (90% <6 um diameter) is made by mixing saline, albumin, and perfluorocarbon at high speed. It has been observed that an acoustic pressure threshold exists above which the droplets vaporize into bubbles approximately 25-times the original droplet diameter. For frequencies between 1.5 and 8 MHz, the threshold decreases from 4.5 to 0.75 MPa peak rarefactional pressure. The single pulse efficiency of ADV has been measured as 26%.; This technology might be useful for tissue occlusion in cancer treatment as well as for aberration correction in acoustic imaging. To demonstrate these potential applications, gas bubbles were made in vivo in animal models by ADV. It was found that ADV could be used to temporarily form large gas bubbles (>30 um) in vivo, which at large number density occluded targeted tissues and reduced the blood flow by 34%. Alternatively, for a very sparse droplet population, gas bubbles could serve as potential point beacons for phase aberration correction given their backscatter amplitudes of 24 dB above tissue background. Other possible applications include drug delivery, indicator for cryo therapy, pressure/radiation beacons, hyperthermia, and cavitation nuclei.; ADV of individual droplets showed that during acoustic irradiation, droplets perform dipole-type oscillations and that such oscillations increased in amplitude with acoustic intensity. Smaller droplets required more acoustic intensity for vaporization than larger droplets; however, independent of droplet diameter, a maximum oscillation amplitude of 1.3 um, was required. This threshold corresponds to a Reynolds number of ∼5 × 104. Vaporization started either as a spot on the axis of oscillation close to a pole of the droplet, or homogeneously throughout the droplet's imaged cross-section. It is concluded that because of the high Reynolds number, the mechanism of vaporization might be based on hydrodynamic effects. An inverse frequency relationship was measured for the dependence of the pressure threshold of ADV on the acoustic frequency. This supports a model for dipole motion of droplets based on the local pressure gradient of the acoustic field.