Acoustic bubble sorting for ultrasound contrast agent enrichment

作者：Segers Tim^*; Versluis Michel

来源：Lab on a Chip, 2014, 14(10): 1705-1714.

DOI：10.1039/c3lc51296g

An ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) suspension contains encapsulated microbubbles with a wide size distribution, with radii ranging from 1 to 10 mu m. Medical transducers typically operate at a single frequency, therefore only a small selection of bubbles will resonate to the driving ultrasound pulse. Thus, the sensitivity can be improved by narrowing down the size distribution. Here, we present a simple lab-on-a-chip method to sort the population of microbubbles on-chip using a traveling ultrasound wave. First, we explore the physical parameter space of acoustic bubble sorting using well-defined bubble sizes formed in a flow-focusing device, then we demonstrate successful acoustic sorting of a commercial UCA. This novel sorting strategy may lead to an overall improvement of the sensitivity of contrast ultrasound by more than 10 dB.

• 出版日期2014