An Analysis of Sonothrombolysis and Cavitation for Retracted and Unretracted Clots Using Microbubbles Versus Low-Boiling-Point Nanodroplets

The thrombolysis potential of low-boiling-point (−2 °C) perfluorocarbon phase-change nanodroplets (NDs) has previously been demonstrated on aged clots, and we hypothesized that this efficacy would extend to retracted clots. We tested this hypothesis by comparing sonothrombolysis of both unretracted and retracted clots using ND-mediated ultrasound (US+ND) and microbubble-mediated ultrasound (US+MB), respectively. Assessment data included clot mass reduction, cavitation detection, and cavitation cloud imaging
in vitro
. Acoustic parameters included a 7.9-MPa peak negative pressure and 180-cycle bursts with 5-Hz repetition (the corresponding duty cycle and time-averaged intensity of 0.09% and 1.87 W/cm
²
, respectively) based on prior studies. With these parameters, we observed a significantly reduced efficacy of US+MB in the retracted versus unretracted model (the averaged mass reduction rate from 1.83%/min to 0.54%/min). Unlike US+MB, US+ND exhibited less reduction of efficacy in the retracted model (from 2.15%/min to 1.04%/min on average). The cavitation detection results correlate with the sonothrombolysis efficacy results showing that both stable and inertial cavitation generated in a retracted clot by US+ND is higher than that by US+MB. We observed that ND-mediated cavitation shows a tendency to occur inside a clot, whereas MB-mediated cavitation occurs near the surface of a retracted clot, and this difference is more significant with retracted clots compared to unretracted clots. We conclude that ND-mediated sonothrombolysis outperforms MB-mediated therapy regardless of clot retraction, and this advantage of ND-mediated cavitation is emphasized for retracted clots. The primary mechanisms are hypothesized to be sustained cavitation level and cavitation clouds in the proximity of a retracted clot by US+ND.