Abstract
Ultrasound is a widespread clinical imaging modality, and researchers are developing ultrasound for several exciting therapeutic applications, such as targeted drug delivery. Microbubbles are tiny (1-10 µm diameter) bubbles that can be injected into the body to improve the utility of biomedical ultrasound. Research on individual microbubbles has shown a strong correlation between acoustic response and size. For example, resonance frequency and scattering cross section are nonlinear functions of microbubble diameter. Unfortunately, most microbubble-production methods generate populations with a broad size distribution. This leads to a distribution of responses to a given ultrasound pulse. In principle, the precision of biomedical ultrasound can be improved by the use of microbubbles of a more uniform size. This talk will present methods used to measure microbubble size and isolate selected size sub-populations with centrifugation. The discussion will then turn to results from in vivo imaging, with an emphasis on molecular imaging. Finally, we will discuss recent results on the use of size-isolated microbubbles for in vitro and in vivo sonoporation
Biography
Mark Andrew Borden is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of Colorado. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Arizona in 1999 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California Davis in 2003. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis and visiting scientist in Radiology at the Arizona Cancer Center. He was an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University from 2007-2010, before taking his current position at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has published over 60 journal articles, 6 book chapters and 15 patents on microbubbles and their biomedical applications. His honors include an NSF CAREER Award and the James D. Watson Investigator Award.