Low-Pressure Burst-Mode Focused Ultrasound Wave Reconstruction and Mapping for Blood-Brain Barrier Opening: A Preclinical Examination

Burst-mode focused ultrasound (FUS) exposure has been shown to induce transient blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening for potential CNS drug delivery. FUS-BBB opening requires imaging guidance during the intervention, yet current imaging technology only enables postoperative outcome confirmation. In this study, we propose an approach to visualize short-burst low-pressure focal beam distribution that allows to be applied in FUS-BBB opening intervention on small animals. A backscattered acoustic-wave reconstruction method based on synchronization among focused ultrasound emission, diagnostic ultrasound receiving and passively beamformed processing were developed. We observed that focal beam could be successfully visualized for in vitro FUS exposure with 0.5–2 MHz without involvement of microbubbles. The detectable level of FUS exposure was 0.467 MPa in pressure and 0.05 ms in burst length. The signal intensity (SI) of the reconstructions was linearly correlated with the FUS exposure level both in-vitro (r(2) = 0.9878) and in-vivo (r(2) = 0.9943), and SI level of the reconstructed focal beam also correlated with the success and level of BBB-opening. The proposed approach provides a feasible way to perform real-time and closed-loop control of FUS-based brain drug delivery.