# A Numerical Platform for Microbubble Enhanced Sonothrombolysis

> **NIH NIH R43** · DYNAFLOW, INC. · 2024 · $281,956

## Abstract

Thrombosis is a leading cause of death and disability in the United States. While
conventional treatment methods for thrombosis carry high-risks side effects, non-invasive
ultrasound treatments have shown promise, especially when microbubbles are included to
enhance lysis rates at lower ultrasound intensities. However, the physics behind microbubble
enhanced thrombolysis involves complex and inter-coupled mechanisms, such as bubble and
structure dynamics, bubble cloud, bubble-flow, and cloud-clot interactions. As a result, the
biophysics of microbubble enhanced thrombolysis remains poorly understood, which poses a
major barrier to effective clinical applications.
 To address this challenge, this proposed SBIR project aims to develop a biophysics-
based numerical platform for the accurate characterization of microbubble-enhanced
ultrasound and its interaction with blood clots, as well as the resultant clot removal. This
platform will allow for the accurate prediction of clot lysis rates under various operating
conditions such as bubble size, concentrations, and ultrasonic properties etc. Innovation will
center on overcoming the technical challenges of meeting performance requirements for both
accuracy and efficiency, by incorporating multi-scale, multi-discipline physics into a
systematical multi-material modeling framework, along with significant speedup through novel
High Performance Computing scheme developments. The proposed efforts will extend the
capabilities of a previous in-house, viscous compressible multi-material flow solver that was
demonstrated in microbubble-enhanced high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for tumor
ablations. Essential new development will be to incorporate appropriate strain stress relations
to consider the viscoelastic properties of blood clots and integrate a two-way coupled Discrete
Singularity Model for microbubbles to capture nonlinear bubble cloud dynamics and its
interaction with acoustic fields and evolving structures. This single-code strategy will avoid the
drawback of coupling different codes, which poses a barrier to biomedical researchers for
clinical applications. In addition, the simulations will be greatly accelerated by High
Performance Computing schemes to be fast enough to be practical for real-world problems.
 This project has the potential to significantly benefit the health and welfare of millions of
people in the United States and around the world by accelerating and promoting the wide
clinical applications of microbubble -enhanced sonothrombolysis. This will greatly reduce risks
and enhance the efficiency of conventional FDA-approved sonothrombolysis.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10821632
- **Project number:** 1R43HL172528-01
- **Recipient organization:** DYNAFLOW, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Jingsen Ma
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $281,956
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-17 → 2025-09-16

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10821632

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10821632, A Numerical Platform for Microbubble Enhanced Sonothrombolysis (1R43HL172528-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10821632. Licensed CC0.

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