The Advent of Biomolecular Ultrasound Imaging

Baptiste Heiles,Dion Terwiel,David Maresca

doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2021.03.011

Baptiste Heiles, Dion Terwiel + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2021.03.011

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Journal: Neuroscience	Publication Date: Mar 13, 2021
Citations: 13	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Delft University of Technology

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is one of the most widely used modalities in clinical practice, revealing human prenatal development but also arterial function in the adult brain. Ultrasound waves travel deep within soft biological tissues and provide information about the motion and mechanical properties of internal organs. A drawback of ultrasound imaging is its limited ability to detect molecular targets due to a lack of cell-type specific acoustic contrast. To date, this limitation has been addressed by targeting synthetic ultrasound contrast agents to molecular targets. This molecular ultrasound imaging approach has proved to be successful but is restricted to the vascular space. Here, we introduce the nascent field of biomolecular ultrasound imaging, a molecular imaging approach that relies on genetically encoded acoustic biomolecules to interface ultrasound waves with cellular processes. We review ultrasound imaging applications bridging wave physics and chemical engineering with potential for deep brain imaging.

Highlights

Ultrasound imaging is used daily in clinical practice to assess the anatomical and physiological features of organs
We introduce the nascent field of biomolecular ultrasound imaging, a molecular imaging approach that relies on genetically encoded acoustic biomolecules to interface ultrasound waves with cellular processes
In 2011, functional ultrasound neuroimaging (Maceet al., 2011; Rabut et al, 2019) has been introduced as a breakthrough modality that relies on neurovascular coupling to map neuronal activity with a higher spatiotemporal resolution and portability than fMRI (Deffieux et al, 2018). fUS has been used to track epilepsy crises in human neonates (Demene et al, 2017) or to delineate tumor-brain interfaces in neuro-oncology patients (Imbault et al, 2017; Soloukey et al, 2020)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Ultrasound imaging is used daily in clinical practice to assess the anatomical and physiological features of organs. Maps of the living brain with a 30 microns resolution (Heiles, 2019) These ultrasound imaging methods are not inherently sensitive to cellular and molecular processes. We cover recent ultrasound neuroimaging methods, ultrasound contrast agents used to interface with the brain, molecular imaging applications in the vascular space, and extravascular biomolecular imaging applications. Mapping cerebrovascular function with ultrafast ultrasound Doppler imaging With the introduction of high framerate plane wave ultrasound imaging, referred to as ultrafast ultrasound (Tanter and Fink, 2014), ultrasound imaging can capture thousands of images per second This ultrasound imaging approach was originally proposed by Bruneel et al (1977) but only recently made possible thanks to modern multi-core computing architectures (Tanter and Fink, 2014).

Contrastfree methods

D Engineered GV

Findings

D B-mode