Acoustic Holograms for Bilateral Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in a Mouse Model

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2022 Apr;69(4):1359-1368. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2021.3115553. Epub 2022 Mar 18.

Abstract

Transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS) in conjunction with circulating microbubbles injection is the sole non-invasive technique that temporally and locally opens the blood-brain barrier (BBB), allowing targeted drug delivery into the central nervous system (CNS). However, single-element FUS technologies do not allow the simultaneous targeting of several brain structures with high-resolution, and multi-element devices are required to compensate the aberrations introduced by the skull. In this work, we present the first preclinical application of acoustic holograms to perform a bilateral BBB opening in two mirrored regions in mice. The system consisted of a single-element focused transducer working at 1.68 MHz, coupled to a 3D-printed acoustic hologram designed to produce two symmetric foci in anesthetized mice in vivo and, simultaneously, compensate the aberrations of the wavefront caused by the skull bones. T1-weighed MR images showed gadolinium extravasation at two symmetric quasi-spherical focal spots. By encoding time-reversed fields, holograms are capable of focusing acoustic energy with a resolution near the diffraction limit at multiple spots inside the skull of small preclinical animals. This work demonstrates the feasibility of hologram-assisted BBB opening for low-cost and highly-localized targeted drug delivery in the CNS in symmetric regions of separate hemispheres.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics*
  • Animals
  • Blood-Brain Barrier* / diagnostic imaging
  • Brain / diagnostic imaging
  • Disease Models, Animal
  • Mice
  • Skull