Proceedings of the 11th Convention of the
European Acoustics Association
Forum Acusticum / EuroNoise 2025


Málaga, Spain
June 23 - 26, 2025





Session: A12.03 Biomedical ultrasound
Date: Wednesday 25 June 2025
Time: 09:20
Title: Blood-brain-barrier opening in small animals using focused ultrasound
Author(s): Jesús Limens-Pinaque
Josep Rodríguez-Sendra
Juan José Rodríguez-García
Adrián Arándiga
Jose Luis Alonso-Ramos
Daniel Panadero Soler
Noé Jiménez
Patricia Rico
Santiago Canals
Francisco Camarena
Pages: 3029-3034
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.61782/fa.2025.0179
PDF: https://dael.euracoustics.org/confs/fa2025/data/articles/000179.pdf
Conference proceedings
Abstract

Focused ultrasound combined with microbubbles can locally and transiently open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in a non-invasive and safe manner, providing a potential strategy for drug delivery into the brain. The technique is currently being used to test drugs for the treatment of different pathologies; however, the BBB opening dimensions depends on several characteristics of the ultrasonic beam. In this work we characterize the BBB opening in small animals produced by a manufactured transducer operating at frequencies 1.05 MHz (fundamental; FWHM3dB = 1.5 mm | DOF3dB = 6 mm) and 3.25 MHz (first harmonic; FWHM3dB = 0.5 mm | DOF3dB = 2 mm). The transducer has been tested in 11 mice, demonstrating its capability for different BBB opening dimensions with gadolinium (Gd) signal detected in contrast-enhanced T1-weighted MRI.