Cardiac arrhythmias produced by ultrasound and contrast agents

Ultrasound is used widely in medicine for both diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Ultrasound contrast agents are suspensions of gas-filled microbubbles used to enhance diagnostic imaging. Microbubble contrast agents can increase the likelihood of bioeffects of ultrasound associated with acoustic cavitation. Under certain exposure conditions, the interaction of ultrasound with cardiac tissues can produce cardiac arrhythmias. The general objective of this thesis was to develop a greater understanding of ultrasound-induced premature cardiac beats. The hypothesis guiding this work was that acoustic cavitation is the physical mechanism for the production of arrhythmias with ultrasound. This hypothesis was tested through a series of experiments with mice in vivo and theoretical investigations.; Results of this research supported the acoustic cavitation hypothesis. The acoustic pressure threshold for premature beats was significantly lower with microbubble contrast agents present in the blood than without. With microbubbles, the threshold for premature beats was below the current output limits of diagnostic devices. The threshold was not significantly dependent upon contrast agent type and was not influenced by contrast agent dose over three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the dependence of the threshold on acoustic frequency was consistent with the frequency dependence of acoustic cavitation. Experimentally determined thresholds for premature beats in vivo were in excellent agreement with theoretically estimated thresholds for inertial cavitation. A passive cavitation detector (PCD) was used to measure the acoustic emissions produced by cavitating microbubbles in vivo. A direct correlation between the amplitude of the PCD and the percentage of ultrasound pulses producing a premature beat was consistent with cavitation as a mechanism for this bioeffect. Although this thesis focused on the mechanistic understanding of ultrasound-induced arrhythmias, more persistent effects on the murine heart were also discovered. In the presence of microbubbles, ultrasound could produce morphological changes in the ECG and vascular damage in the myocardium. Taken together, these results indicate that ultrasound-induced arrhythmias were produced by intravascular microbubble activity. The findings of this thesis provide a greater understanding of acoustic cavitation in vivo, useful for the advancement of ultrasound contrast agents in imaging and therapy.