Sonoporation is an efficient method to deliver therapeutic agents to malignant tumors. This modality consists in insonifying tissue with a low-frequency (LF) ultrasound beam after intravenous injection of gas microbubbles. The ultrasonic activation of these microbubbles increases the permeability of biological barriers to therapeutic agents. To control the sonoporation efficiency in real time, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one of the most use approaches. However, the use of ultrasonic imaging is a cheaper and easier to implement imaging modality. This technique requires bi-modal ultrasonic probes, which combine a LF transducer for therapy and a high-frequency (HF) transducer for imaging. To meet this need, a bi-modal probe was designed with 1-3 piezocomposite materials. It combines a 16x16 matrix array centered at 1 MHz and a 128 elements linear-array centered at 20 MHz. The probe is a stack of two composite plates (HF and LF), which have coincident regions of interest. This paper focuses on the complete characterization of the fabricated prototype: from basic electroacoustical characterizations up to in vitro tests of sonoporation.
Track ID:
5.2
Track Name:
Biomedical Diagnostic and Imaging Transducers (TMI)
