Title: Ultrasound Cellular Imaging and Sonothrombolysis
Abstract: As an important medical tool, ultrasound has been used for diagnostics and therapy for decades. Unlike X-ray based imaging, ultrasound does not rely on radiative activities that makes it much safer for medical applications. Comparing to optics, ultrasound has a much higher penetration depth into the tissue. These advantages make ultrasound the dominant imaging method for abdominal organ observation. The developments of ultrasound contrast agents like microbubbles and nanodroplets have enabled imaging beyond diffraction limit. Moreover, the studies of high intensity ultrasound have enabled many novel therapies including blood clot sonothrombolysis. However, the existing super-resolution ultrasound technique cannot be used for the observation of cells. For therapeutic ultrasound, sonothrombolysis usually last for more than 15 hours when treating large clot, which is undesirable and can sometimes be life threatening for severe cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) or pulmonary embolism (PE). In this seminar, I will present our recent research on super-resolution ultrasound imaging with phase-transitioning nanodroplets and sonothrombolysis with vortex ultrasound induced shear stress. Our results on the imaging in gel phantoms have shown the achievable resolution at micrometer scale. The preliminary experiments of microinjection of nanodroplets into single cells show the potential for future observation of single cells deep in tissue. Our results on the vortex ultrasound sonothrombolysis demonstrate a significant improvement in the efficacy and rate of clot lysis that allows us to recanalize large acute, completely occluded clot in a short treatment period, which can be a lifesaving tool for severe CVST and PE patients.
Zoom Link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/95963290955
Recording: Zoom Recording