title: Wideband acoustic activation and detection of droplet vaporization events using a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer.
abstract: An ongoing challenge exists in understanding and optimizing the acoustic droplet vaporization (ADV) process to enhance contrast agent effectiveness for biomedical applications. Acoustic signatures from vaporization events can be identified and differentiated from microbubble or tissue signals based on their frequency content. The present study exploited the wide bandwidth of a 128-element capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) array for activation (8 MHz) and real-time imaging (1 MHz) of ADV events from droplets circulating in a tube. Compared to a commercial piezoelectric probe, the CMUT array provides a substantial increase of the contrast-to-noise ratio.
authors.affiliation: Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Novell
authors.affiliation: Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Arena
authors.affiliation: Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.
authors.forename: Omer
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Oralkan
authors.affiliation: Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.
authors.forename: Paul A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Dayton
mesh_terms: D003287:Contrast Media / Q000737:chemistry*; D004867:Equipment Design; D005466:Fluorocarbons / Q000737:chemistry*; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry*; D045423:Microbubbles; D013997:Time Factors; D014159:Transducers; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014835:Volatilization
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media; D005466:Fluorocarbons; D008055:Lipids; C042852:perflutren