Ultrasound Phased-Array Microbubble Medication Delivery System for Noninvasive Brain Tumor Treatment

Overview

Focused ultrasound (FUS) with microbubbles can noninvasively open the blood–brain barrier (BBB) for targeted drug delivery, but the method is limited by off-target acoustic sidelobes, which reduce safety and spatial precision, decreasing the safety and spatial resolution (how narrow the beam/focal spot is). The goal of this study is to develop a safer and more precise transcranial system based on a hemispherical phased array. It was hypothesized that the Hybrid-Hamming apodization (reduction of amplitude of outer elements in an array so the resulting wave pattern maximizes the main focal beam while minimizing sidelobes) in combination with a Phase Coherence Factor (PCF) processing would maximize phase coherence and thereby decrease sidelobes while maintaining focal intensity. A 256-channel hemispherical array at 1.0MHz was assessed using near-field numerical simulations in the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld formulation. Ten controlled studies examined beamforming techniques, array shape, number of elements, element spacing, frequency, multi-beam array, tissue attenuation, depth of focus, pulse characteristics, and safety factors. The hybrid Hamming and PCF method resulted in a peak sidelobe level of −20.9 dB, an improvement of 11.4 dB over the uniform case, with a 1.5 mm lateral focal width. The safety indices satisfied FDA standards. The performance was consistent for skull thicknesses ranging from 5 to 11 mm, and results showed that the coherence-preserving beamforming technique is most useful in the near-field hemispherical array, where the conventional apodization technique disturbs the phase alignment. The hemispherical array offered better spatial resolution and robustness than the planar array. The proposed system proved the hypothesis correct and demonstrated a safer, precise transcranial microbubble-mediated drug delivery.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Physics & Astronomy (Senior Division) · Entry S-17-21

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