Meeting Report: Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Spring 2024

Published:

Key Points

  • The spring ASA meeting was held May 13–17 in Ottawa, Canada. 
  • Many mechanisms of focused ultrasound were featured in presentations and abstract sessions. 

The 186th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America was held in Ottawa, Canada, from May 13–17, 2024. As “Acoustics Week in Canada,” the conference was co-sponsored by Canadian Acoustical Association. The scientific sessions attracted researchers and clinicians who are interested in advancing the science of acoustics. 

More than 45 presentations and abstracts featured the latest developments in focused ultrasound technologies. 

“This joint meeting between ASA and the Canadian Acoustical Association was a great success,” said Meaghan O’Reilly, PhD, the meeting’s Technical Program Chair. “The program included several special sessions on topics relevant to focused ultrasound, including sonobiopsy, droplets, sonodynamic therapy, ultrasound beamforming, and wave propagation in complex media. The biomedical acoustics track featured excellent invited and contributed talks from focused ultrasound researchers.” 

The full text for the following presentations and abstracts has been published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Although 45 publications are listed below, we recommend searching the issue for your own key words, mechanisms, and indications. 

Focused Ultrasound Presentations 

Sonobiopsy for Noninvasive Molecular Diagnosis by Hong Chen 

Intersections of Focused Ultrasound and Extracellular Vesicles: Toward Diversified Biomarker Enrichment and Discovery by Natasha D. Sheybani 

Microbubble-enhanced and activity-informed FUS liquid biopsy in infiltrating gliomas by Pavlos Anastasiadis; Chetan Bettegowda; Graeme F. Woodworth 

Extracellular Vesicle Response Following Focused Ultrasound–Mediated Blood–Brain Barrier Opening for the Detection of Alzheimer’s Pathology by Alina Kline-Schoder; Fotios Tsitsos; Alec Batts; Melody DiBenedetto; Sua Bae; Keyu Liu; Elisa Konofagou 

Releasing genetic biomarkers from cells and tissues with ultrasound by Roger J. Zemp; Pradyumna Kedarisetti; Joy Wang 

Evaluation of sonobiopsy feasibility and safety in a mouse model of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma by Dingyue Zhang; Yan Gong; Leqi Yang; Kevin Xu; Yimei Yue; Jinyun Yuan; Hong Chen 

Monitoring gene expression in the brain with synthetic serum markers by Jerzy O. Szablowski; Joon Pyung Seo; Sangsin Lee; Shirin Nouraein; Zhimin Huang; James Kwon; James S. Trippett; Ryan Wang 

Monitoring of ultrasound targeted drug delivery with liquid biopsy by Victor Menezes; Hohyun Lee; Costas Arvanitis 

Acoustic emissions based estimation of the temporal changes in microbubble radius during ultrasonic excitation by Hohyun Lee; Costas Arvanitis 

Capillaries, cancer, and cavitation: An introduction to the Biomedical Acoustics Technical Committee by Julianna C. Simon 

Real-time assessment of focused ultrasound-induced bioeffects in elastic tissues by Jacob C. Elliott; Grace M. Wood; Julianna C. Simon 

Native bubble nuclei for acoustic cavitation in 3D cell cultures by Ferdousi Sabera Rawnaque;Julianna C. Simon 

Focused ultrasound and microbubble induced changes in the phenotype of breast cancer cell lines by Dure S. Khan; Rachel E. Rubino; Christopher J. Nicol; Ryan Alkins 

Nonlinear imaging-based bubble cloud size estimates compared with histotripsy treatment zone: An in vitro study by Vishwas Trivedi; Kenneth B. Bader; Himanshu Shekhar 

Size and pressure dependent activity of lipid coated bubbles and finite element simulation of the propagation of focused ultrasound through bubbly media by Amin Jafarisojahrood; Carly Pellow; Agata A. Exner; David Goertz; Michael Kolios 

In vitro comparison of subharmonic-aided pressure estimation sensitivity among microfluidic monodisperse microbubbles, sonazoid, and definity by Ga Won Kim; Lisa te Winkle; Wim van Hoeve; Kausik Sarkar; Flemming Forsberg; John Eisenbrey 

Microstreaming profile of a phospholipid-coated wall-attached microbubble undergoing shape oscillation by Hongchen Li; Yuchen Wang; Ruisheng Su; Christian Cierpka; Michel Versluis; Antonius F. van der Steen; Martin D. Verweij; Nico de Jong; Klazina Kooiman 

Focused ultrasound pulse repetition frequency impacts bubble activity and tracer delivery during blood-brain barrier opening by Stecia-Marie Fletcher; Amanda Chisholm; Yongzhi Zhang; Nathan J. McDannold 

Dosage dependent subharmonic response and ambient pressure sensitivity of sonazoid microbubbles for subharmonic aided pressure estimation by Mehmet Yapar; Roozbeh H. Azami; Flemming Forsberg; John Eisenbrey; Kausik Sarkar 

Extracellular matrix stiffness affects microbubble-assisted endothelial permeabilization under flow by Zoe D. Katz; Elahe Memari; Brandon Helfield 

Influence of the liquid ionic strength on the resonance frequency and estimated shell parameters of lipid-coated microbubbles by Amin Jafarisojahrood; Celina Yang; Claire Counil; Pinuta Nittayacharn; David Goertz; Agata A. Exner; Michael Kolios 

Ultrasound and microbubble mediated T cell modulation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by Ana G. Baez; Davindra Singh; Stephanie He; Mehri Hajiaghayi; Fatemeh Gholizadeh; Peter J. Darlington; Brandon Helfield 

Transducer module apodization for reducing bone heating during focused ultrasound uterine fibroid ablation by Sobhan Goudarzi; Ryan M. Jones; Yin H. W. Lee; Kullervo Hynynen 

Investigation of HIFU beam propagation through acoustic holograms in water by Timofey Krit; Luisa Brecht; Nina Reinhardt; Johannes Lindemeyer; Holger Grüll 

Experimental and numerical comparison of multiple passive beamformers for separating intra- and extra-canal cavitation activity during transvertebral spinal cord therapy by Andrew P. Frizado; Meaghan O’Reilly 

Real time cavitation monitoring during ultrasound-mediated drug delivery in normothermically perfused human tumour-bearing livers by Michael Gray; Brian Lyons; David Johnson; Brannon Nicholls; Alex Gordon-Weeks; Robert Carlisle; Constantin Coussios 

An investigation on the mechanism(s) behind sonodynamic therapy and the use of sonosentizers by Stephanie C. Walton 

Extracellular adenosine-5′-triphosphate release kinetics following microbubble cavitation in cultured human endothelial cells by Marie Amate; Ju Jing Tan; Francis Boudreault; Ryszard Grygorczyk; Thomas Gervais; François Yu 

Subharmonics are not the full story—Searching for acoustic signatures of cavitation and other fantastic beasts by Qiang Wu; Michael Gray; Cameron Smith; Robin O. Cleveland; Constantin Coussios; Eleanor P. Stride 

Curiouser and curiouser—Sonoluminescence, sonoporation, and sonodynamic therapy by Luca Bau; Niclas Westerberg; Richard Lane; LuNa Hu; Kritika Singh; John Callan; Anthony McHale; Daniele Faccio; Eleanor P. Stride 

Ultrasound Targeted Microbubble Cavitation (UTMC) for the treatment of Myocardial Microvascular Obstruction (MVO) by Muhammad Wahab Amjad; Soheb Anwar Mohammed; Xucai Chen; Flordeliza S. Villanueva; John J. Pacella 

The effect of cavitation-induced pressure on bubble cloud density in histotripsy by Adam Maxwell; Eli Vlaisavljevich 

Simulation-corrected focusing to the vertebral canal by David Martin, Rui Xu, Meaghan O’Reilly 

Optical method for direct temperature measurement of high intensity focused ultrasound heating by Ghanem Oweis; Hussein Daoud 

Enhancing cancer treatment through solid tumor fractionation with nanodroplet-mediated histotripsy and immunotherapy by Bar Glickstein; Tali Ilovitsh 

An MR-compatible fiber-optic probe for measuring focused ultrasound-induced temperature rises without viscous heating artifacts by Sara L. Johnson; Henrik Odeen; Allison Payne; Harry Vine 

Precise, low-intensity triggered release in biological systems using ultrasound-responsive antibubbles by Athanasios Athanassiadis; Nicolas Moreno-Gomez; Dimitris Missirlis; Yannik L. Trautnitz; Peer Fischer 

Focused ultrasound-guided delivery of gene editing protein in human induced pluripotent stem cells by Kyle Hazel; Davindra Singh; Mathieu Husser; Elahe Memari; Stephanie He; Brandon Helfield 

Monodisperse microbubble-mediated drug delivery: Influence of microbubbles size on drug delivery outcome by Yuchen Wang; Hongchen Li; Bram Meijlink; Jiali Luo; Robert Beurskens; Benjamin Johnson; Klazina Kooiman 

Using ultrasound-targeted microbubble cavitation to open the blood–brain barrier for drug delivery in Alzheimer’s disease by Grace E. Conway; Xucai Chen; Stacey J. Rizzo; Afonso C. Silva; Flordeliza S. Villanueva 

The activation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, induced by calcium influx plays a crucial role in regulating endothelial hyperpermeability caused by ultrasound-targeted microbubble cavitation by Anurag N. Paranjape; Xucai Chen; Flordeliza S. Villanueva 

Designing a benign prostatic hyperplasia dual-mode cavitation cloud and boiling histotripsy therapy transducer by Yashwanth Nanda Kumar; Kaizer Contreras; Yak-Nam Wang; Wayne Kreider; Stephanie Totten; George R. Schade; Adam D. Maxwell 

Correlation of Escherichia coli inactivation with histotripsy bubble cloud size by Pratik A. Ambekar; Tatiana D. Khokhlova; Yak-Nam Wang; Pavel B. Rosnitskiy; Daniel Leotta; Gilles P. Thomas; Stephanie Totten; Shelby Piersonn; Matthew Bruce; Adam D. Maxwell; Keith Chan; W. Conrad Liles; Evan P. Dellinger; Adeyinka Adedipe; Wayne Monsky; Thomas Matula 

Tendon as a model for testing the efficacy of histotripsy for chronic deep vein thrombosis by Kevin Zhao; Erik Saucedo; Kenneth B. Bader 

Active targeting of nanotherapeutics using power cavitation imaging with a linear array transducer by Kamso Onyemeh; Mark Burgess; Raashed Raziuddin; Daniel Heller 

Biomedical Acoustics Sessions 

The biomedical acoustics content was categorized into the following sessions: 

  • Ultrasound brain and super-resolution imaging 
  • General topics in biomedical acoustics: imaging and bioeffects 
  • Ultrasound beamforming and its applications 
  • General topics in biomedical acoustics: microbubbles 
  • Sonodynamic therapy: a new hope 
  • Student poster competition 
  • Wave propagation in complex media: from theory to applications 
  • Droplets strike back 
  • General topics in biomedical acoustics: drug delivery and therapy 
  • General topics in biomedical acoustics: methods 

Next Meeting 

The 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America will be a virtual meeting that is held November 18–22, 2024. Registration is now open

The Foundation thanks Meaghan O’Reilly, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Ultrasound, senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute, and associate professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto for assistance with this meeting report. 

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