This review discusses the development, current applications, and therapeutic potential of ultrasound contrast agents. Microbubbles containing gases act as true, intravascular indicators, permitting a noninvasive, quantitative analysis of the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of blood flow and volumes within the microvasculature. These shelled microbubbles are near-perfect reflectors of acousti...

Colloidal nanosilica is currently being produced by various methods which are mainly high energy intensive and/or not environmentally friendly. It is therefore essential to develop new energy-efficient and environmentally friendly technologies. This paper introduces a new ultrasound assisted route based on alkali leaching of silica fume for synthesis of colloidal silica nanoparticles. The ef...

Minimally invasive applications of thermal and mechanical energy to selective areas of the human anatomy have led to significant advances in treatment of and recovery from typical surgical interventions. Image-guided focused ultrasound allows energy to be deposited deep into the tissue, completely noninvasively. There has long been interest in using this focal energy delivery to block nerve con...

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common types of cancer among women, which often leads to death. As a result, developing new techniques for diagnosing this disease at early stages, preventing the high rate of death in women with high-risk, and minimizing the large side effects on the economy must be considered seriously by experts. For early diagnosis of this disease, it is necessary to utiliz...

Minimally invasive and non-invasive surgical techniques remained a prime research focus in bio-medical arena in the past over two decades due to their numerous advantages over conventional surgery methods. Remote ablation of deep-seated abnormalities by various modalities such as the use of focused high intensity ultrasound can provide completely non-invasive procedures if the energy in the bea...

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that the ultrasonic energy used to melt the tip of an absorbable polylactide Pin (SonicPin) does not have a significant effect on the chemical characterization and associated degradation properties of the material. The results indicate that the polylactide Pin after ultrasound is chemically equivalent to the SonicPin prior to ultrasound with regard t...

As the dairy cow uses body energy reserves in early lactation, body condition scoring has become an integral part of dairy herd management. Several methods based on visual and tactile evaluation have been developed. Problems caused by the subjectivity of these techniques have been reported. Alternative approaches to predict energy reserves or energy balance in dairy cattle include metabolic pro...

Non-invasive neural stimulation techniques are of increasing importance as devices move from the lab to the clinical environment. One such technology-transcranial magnetic stimulation-has already made the transition and is currently used by clinicians to treat depression. This device has several drawbacks, such as a limited ability to focus its energy to a relatively small region and to distrib...

A specific increase in temperature is necessary to achieve a temperature-mediated therapeutic impact by ultrasound in rehabilitation. In order to obtain a physical basis for a definite temperature rise at a certain depths in the human body a human cadaver study in situ was conducted. A set of 16 experiments was carried out with an ultrasound frequency of 1 and 3 MHz. For each frequency the puls...

Ultrasound-mediated drug delivery is a nonchemical, nonviral, and noninvasive method for targeted transport of drugs and genes into cells. Molecules can be delivered into cells when ultrasound disrupts the cell membrane by a mechanism believed to involve cavitation. This study examined molecular uptake and cell viability in cell suspensions (DU145 prostate cancer and aortic smooth muscle cells)...