Interaction of Microbubbles with Ultrasound.

The clinical need for bedside myocardial perfusion studies is obvious in the present era of revascularization. Animal and first clinical studies suggest that microbubbles can be used as intravascular tracers of perfusion in conjunction with echocardiography as an imaging modality. In order to fully appreciate the potential and limitations of this approach, the complex interactions of microbubbles within an acoustic field need to be elucidated. Most importantly, there is a strong dependence of bubble effects on the acoustic pressure. At low pressures, linear backscatter yields low signal intensities; at medium range of pressures, bubble resonance causes the reflection of nonlinear signals with harmonic frequencies; and at high pressures, spontaneous acoustic emission with high signal intensity occurs as a final signal of the bubble in its process of disintegration. Thus, in order to allow sufficient replenishment of bubbles to the imaging plane, triggered imaging should be used with one frame every second to eighth cardiac cycle. Traditional gray scale echocardiography was not successful as an imaging modality because of the similarity of gray shades between the myocardium and the contrast effect. Subsequently, second harmonic imaging was developed and was fairly successful in contrast detection, although inherent problems persisted due to the overlap of fundamental and harmonic frequencies in the filtered signals. Harmonic power Doppler imaging turned out as the most sensitive acquisition method, however, with an early dropout at medium range attenuation. In theory, the new technique of pulse inversion may be most promising as this bubble specific imaging modality should combine high sensitivity of detection with great tolerance for attenuation effects in humans. First in vitro studies have confirmed its superiority over harmonic power Doppler in combination with stabilized microbubbles such as SonoVuetrade mark. Thus, we will have to accomplish a lot more work and comparative studies in humans before myocardial contrast echocardiography can emerge as a reproducible technique for evaluating myocardial perfusion with high diagnostic accuracy.