The effects on thermal lesion shape and size from bubble clouds produced by acoustic droplet vaporization

BACKGROUND: Bubbles formed by acoustic droplet vaporization (ADV) have proven to be an effective method for significant enlargement of the thermal lesions produced by high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). We investigated the influences of bubble cloud shape and droplet concentration on HIFU thermal lesions, as these relate to the ADV technique. METHODS: Unlike previous studies where the droplets were simultaneously vaporized with the HIFU exposure for thermal lesion formation, droplets were vaporized by pulse wave (PW) ultrasound prior to continuous wave (CW) ultrasound heating in this experimental study. Under different experimental conditions, we recorded and quantified by the image processing methods the morphology and size of the bubble clouds created and the corresponding thermal lesions formed. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that different ADV droplet concentrations produced a variety of thermal lesion shapes and sizes. The lesion volume could be increased using PW ultrasound followed by CW exposure, especially for higher droplet concentrations, e.g. 3.41 × 10(6)/mL yielded a tenfold increase over that seen using CW alone. CONCLUSION: These findings could lead to optimization of HIFU therapy by selecting a bubble forming strategy and droplet concentrations, especially using lower ultrasound powers which is desirable in clinical applications. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12938-018-0596-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.