The laser generation of vapor bubbles around plasmonic nanoparticles can be enhanced through the application of an ultrasound field; a technique referred to as photoacoustic cavitation. The combination of light and ultrasound allows for bubble formation at lower laser fluence and peak negative ultrasound pressure than can be achieved using either modality alone. The growth and collapse of these...

background: the complexity of assisted reproductive technology (art) increased during the last decades. new scientific and medical findings as well as the statutory requirements for improving the safety and the outcome of art were the main impetus for its development. while therapy planning is done and art is used by the ivf centers, the medical support and monitoring of patients is conducted b...

Clinical applications and safety concerns Clinical users should balance the expected clinical benefit from ultrasound contrast agents against the possibility of associated bioeffects. Caution should be exercised in the use of microbubble ultrasound in tissues where damage to microvasculature could be dangerous. Some areas of concern include the brain, the eye, the fetus and the neonate. Clinica...

Laparoscopic surgery is performed through small incisions that limit free sight and possibility to palpate organs. Although endoscopes provide an overview of organs inside the body, information beyond the surface of the organs is missing. Ultrasound can provide real-time essential information of inside organs, which is valuable for increased safety and accuracy in guidance of procedures. We hav...

Ultrasound-targeted microbubble destruction (UTMD) is a promising technique for non-invasive, targeted drug delivery, and its applications in chemotherapeutic drug delivery to solid tumors have attracted growing interest. Ultrasound, which has been conventionally used for diagnostic imaging, has evolved as a promising tool for therapeutic applications mainly because of its ability to be focused...

Anaesthesia is one of the few sub-specialties of medicine, which has quickly adapted technology to improve patient safety. This application of technology can be seen in patient monitoring, advances in anaesthesia machines, intubating devices, ultrasound for visualisation of nerves and vessels, etc., Anaesthesia machines have come a long way in the last 100 years, the improvements being driven b...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We aimed to evaluate safety and tolerability of a novel operator-independent ultrasound device among stroke-free volunteers. METHODS A headframe containing 18 ultrasound transducers (each operating at 2 MHz, pulsed-wave) was used to expose both temporal windows and the suboccipital window. The transmission characteristics were set to emulate the acoustic characteristics...

One third of the worldwide disease burden – number of years lost due to disease – is caused by brain diseases, such as dementia, Parkinson’s and brain cancer (DiLuca and Olesen 2014). With an aging population, this burden is expected to rise. Despite the global effort to develop new treatments, there are still no effective drugs for these diseases. One of the major reasons for the lack of succe...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The risks of currently available invasive procedures in body contouring motivate a need for safer, non-invasive technologies for improving the appearance of body silhouette. A new device has been developed that uses focused therapeutic ultrasound to reduce adipose tissue non-invasively. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of a novel non-invasive...

Low-frequency (LF) ultrasound (20-100 kHz) has a diverse set of industrial and medical applications. In fact, high power industrial applications of ultrasound mainly occupy this frequency range. This range is also used for various therapeutic medical applications including sonophoresis (ultrasonic transdermal drug delivery), dentistry, eye surgery, body contouring, the breaking of kidney stones...