Modelling of magnetic microbubbles to evaluate contrast enhanced magneto-motive ultrasound in lymph nodes – a pre-clinical study

Objectives: Despite advances in MRI the detection and characterisation of lymph nodes in rectal cancer remains complex, especially when assessing the response to neo-adjuvant treatment. An alternative approach is functional imaging, previously shown to aid characterization of cancer tissues. We report proof of concept of the novel technique Contrast-Enhanced Magneto-Motive Ultrasound (CE-MMUS) to recover information relating to local perfusion and lymphatic drainage, and interrogate tissue mechanical properties through magnetically induced deformations. Methods: The feasibility of the proposed application was explored using a combination of experimental animal and phantom ultrasound imaging, along with finite element analysis. First, contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging on one wild type mouse recorded lymphatic drainage of magnetic microbubbles after bolus injection. Second, tissue phantoms were imaged using MMUS to illustrate the force- and elasticity dependence of the magneto-motion. Third, the magneto-mechanical interactions of a magnetic microbubble with an elastic solid were simulated using finite element software. Results: Accumulation of magnetic microbubbles in the inguinal lymph node was verified using contrast enhanced ultrasound, with peak enhancement occurring 3.7 s post injection. The magnetic microbubble gave rise to displacements depending on force, elasticity, and bubble radius, indicating an inverse relation between displacement and the latter two. Conclusions: Combining magnetic microbubbles with MMUS could harness the advantages of both techniques, to provide perfusion information, robust lymph node delineation and characterisation based on mechanical properties. Advances in knowledge: (a)Lymphatic drainage of magnetic microbubbles visualised using contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging and (b) magneto-mechanical interactions between such bubbles and surrounding tissue could both contribute to (c) robust detection and characterisation of lymph nodes