Frequency Driven Alteration In Cellular Morphology During Ultrasound Pulsing In A Microfluidic Confinement

Abstract

To instigate therapeutic potential of low-intensity ultrasound further, it is essential to characterize the bio-physical interaction of living cells with alteration of ultrasound frequency. Although, this study is frequently been the subject of speculation in therapeutic ultrasound regime there has been a distinct shortage of attempts to characterize in situ physical-biological interaction in this process. The dearth of effort in this domain inherently calls for our investigation on frequency dependent shape transition in micro onfined biological cells. Here, we used a microfluidic platform for single cell analysis with bio-physical interaction to ultrasound frequency alteration, in line with the fact that microfluidic channels to a large extent mimic the confinement effect induced by micro confinement of physiological pathways. In this dissertation, with the help of series of single-cell direct observation, we show that low intensity ultrasound frequency alteration would reversibly perturb cell membrane structure and count for inherent cell oscillation. However, during post exposure ultrasound period the cytomechnical perturbation of cell membrane is relatively more compared to ultrasound exposure period leading to an inherent residual strain which follows a transition zone near to the resonating frequency of the composite system. Together, these findings indicate that alteration of low intensity ultrasound frequency, if applied to a microfluidic platform on the order of minutes, would produce a reversible effect on physical structures of living cells based on the system resonant frequency during and post exposure ultrasound pulsing.