Cell mechanics in biomedical cavitation

This review paper examines the interdisciplinary field of cell mechanics in biomedical cavitation, focusing on the deformation behaviors of cellular entities like coated microbubbles and liposomes when subjected to cavitation flow.

The review highlight how understanding these mechanics is becoming increasingly important for advancing ultrasonic imaging and drug delivery applications.

The paper presents numerical simulations for bubble dynamics of ultrasound contrast agents (UCAs) using the boundary integral method, with shell effects estimated by adapting Hoff’s model used for thin-shell contrast agents. Viscosity effects are incorporated by including normal viscous stress in the boundary condition.

The paper also review mechanical models for cell membranes and liposomes, covering elastic shell models, elastic solid models, and viscoelastic solid models. They also discuss state-of-the-art techniques for quantitative measurement of viscoelasticity for single cells or coated microbubbles, including atomic force microscopy, optical tweezers, compression methods, and nanoindentation.

The paper highlights potential applications in healthcare, particularly for targeted drug delivery, where microbubbles can be activated by ultrasound to release drug cargo and cause temporary cell membrane leakiness (sonoporation).

We note that future developments should integrate bubble dynamics with cell mechanics models to better understand phenomena like non-spherical bubble oscillation, microstreaming around cells, and the mechanisms of drug release and cellular uptake.