Ultrasound Tracking of the Acoustically Actuated Microswimmer.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ultrasound tracking strategy for the acoustically actuated bubble-based microswimmer. The ultrasound tracking performance is evaluated by comparing the tracking results with the camera tracking. A benchtop experiment is conducted to capture the motion of two types of microswimmers by synchronized ultrasound and camera systems. A laboratory developed tracking algorithm is utilized to estimate the trajectory for both tracking methods. The trajectory reconstructed from ultrasound tracking method compares well with the conventional camera tracking, exhibiting a high accuracy and robustness for three different types of moving trajectories. Ultrasound tracking is an accurate and reliable approach to track the motion of the acoustically actuated microswimmers. Ultrasound imaging is a promising candidate for noninvasively tracking the motion of microswimmers inside the body in biomedical applications and may further promote the real-time control strategy for the microswimmers.