title: Size distribution of microbubbles as a function of shell composition.
abstract: The effect of modifying the shell composition of a population of microbubbles on their size demonstrated through experiment. Specifically, these variations include altering both the mole fraction and molecular weight of functionalized polymer, polyethylene glycol (PEG) in the microbubble phospholipid monolayer shell (1-15 mol% PEG, and 1000-5000 g/mole, respectively). The size distribution is measured with an unbiased image segmentation program written in MATLAB which identifies and sizes bubbles from micrographs. For a population of microbubbles with a shell composition of 5 mol% PEG2000, the mean diameter is 1.42 μm with a variance of 0.244 μm. For the remainder of the shell compositions studied herein, we find that the size distributions do not show a statistically significant correlation to either PEG molecular weight or mole fraction. All the measured distributions are nearly Gaussian in shape and have a monomodal peak.
authors: Department of Chemical Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. smd82@drexel.edu
authors: Stephen
authors: S
authors: Dicker
authors: Michał
authors: M
authors: Mleczko
authors: Georg
authors: G
authors: Schmitz
authors: Steven P
authors: SP
authors: Wrenn
mesh_terms: D003287:Contrast Media / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D045423:Microbubbles; D008970:Molecular Weight; D010743:Phospholipids / Q000737:chemistry; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry*; D012984:Software; D014465:Ultrasonics
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D010743:Phospholipids; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols