Recent work has shown that solid nanoparticles can be used to control the stability of microbubbles used in ultrasound imaging and therapy and to provide other functional characteristics for example in multimodality imaging. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of nanoparticle concentration and the preparation method used on the response of the microbubbles to ultrasound excitation.Microbubbles coated with a surfactant and different concentrations of 15 nm gold nanoparticles were produced using either sonication, or a specially designed microfluidic device. The attenuation and backscattering coefficients from the bubble suspensions and the scattered response from individual bubbles were measured in vitro for a range of frequencies (1-7.5 MHz) and pressures (50-500 kPa). The gold nanoparticles were found to enhance the nonlinear character of the bubble response in agreement with previous theoretical work. The method of bubble generation was also found to significantly affect the acoustic response.

Investigating the acoustic response of gold nanoparticle coated microbubbles

245th National Meeting (2013)

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