Imperial College London

DrValeriaGarbin

Faculty of EngineeringDepartment of Chemical Engineering

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

v.garbin

 
 
//

Assistant

 

Ms Sevgi Thompson +44 (0)20 7594 1478

 
//

Location

 

ACE ExtensionSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Lin:2018:1361-6560/aaac05,
author = {Lin, S and Zhang, G and Jamburidze, A and Chee, M and Leow, CH and Garbin, V and Tang, M-X},
doi = {1361-6560/aaac05},
journal = {Phys Med Biol},
pages = {065002--065002},
title = {Imaging of vaporised sub-micron phase change contrast agents with high frame rate ultrasound and optics.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6560/aaac05},
volume = {63},
year = {2018}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB - Phase-change ultrasound contrast agent (PCCA), or nanodroplet, shows promise as an alternative to the conventional microbubble agent over a wide range of diagnostic applications. Meanwhile, high-frame-rate (HFR) ultrasound imaging with microbubbles enables unprecedented temporal resolution compared to traditional contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging. The combination of HFR ultrasound imaging and PCCAs can offer the opportunity to observe and better understand PCCA behaviour after vaporisation captures the fast phenomenon at a high temporal resolution. In this study, we utilised HFR ultrasound at frame rates in the kilohertz range (5-20 kHz) to image native and size-selected PCCA populations immediately after vaporisation in vitro within clinical acoustic parameters. The size-selected PCCAs through filtration are shown to preserve a sub-micron-sized (mean diameter  <  200 nm) population without micron-sized outliers (>1 µm) that originate from native PCCA emulsion. The results demonstrate imaging signals with different amplitudes and temporal features compared to that of microbubbles. Compared with the microbubbles, both the B-mode and pulse-inversion (PI) signals from the vaporised PCCA populations were reduced significantly in the first tens of milliseconds, while only the B-mode signals from the PCCAs were recovered during the next 400 ms, suggesting significant changes to the size distribution of the PCCAs after vaporisation. It is also shown that such recovery in signal over time is not evident when using size-selective PCCAs. Furthermore, it was found that signals from the vaporised PCCA populations are affected by the amplitude and frame rate of the HFR ultrasound imaging. Using high-speed optical camera observation (30 kHz), we observed a change in particle size in the vaporised PCCA populations exposed to the HFR ultrasound imaging pulses. These findings can further the understanding of PCCA
AU - Lin,S
AU - Zhang,G
AU - Jamburidze,A
AU - Chee,M
AU - Leow,CH
AU - Garbin,V
AU - Tang,M-X
DO - 1361-6560/aaac05
EP - 065002
PY - 2018///
SP - 065002
TI - Imaging of vaporised sub-micron phase change contrast agents with high frame rate ultrasound and optics.
T2 - Phys Med Biol
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6560/aaac05
UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29384498
VL - 63
ER -