PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Dillinger, Cornel
AU  - Rasaiah, Ahilan
AU  - Vogel, Abigail
AU  - Ahmed, Daniel
TI  - Real-time Color Flow Mapping of Ultrasound Microrobots
AID  - 10.1101/2025.01.09.632241
DP  - 2025 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2025.01.09.632241
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/01/14/2025.01.09.632241.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/01/14/2025.01.09.632241.full
AB  - Visualization and tracking of microrobots in real-time pose key challenges for surgical microrobotic systems, as existing imaging modalities like MRI, CT, and X-ray are unable to monitor microscale items with real-time resolution. Ultrasound imaging-guided drug administration represents a significant advancement in this respect, offering real-time visual feedback on invasive medical procedures. However, ultrasound imaging still faces substantial inherent limitations in spatial resolution and signal attenuation, which hinder extending this method to microrobot visualization. Here, we introduce an approach for visualizing individual microrobots in real-time with Color Flow Mapping ultrasound imaging, based on acoustically induced structural oscillations of the microrobot generating a pseudo-Doppler signal. This approach enables the simultaneous localization and activation of bubble-based microrobots using two ultrasound sources operating at distinct frequency bandwidths. Our successful capture of microrobots measuring 60–80 micrometers in diameter reveals the potential of real-time ultrasonic imaging at the microscale.One-sentence Summary Advancing ultrasound imaging for real-time, microscale visualization—a critical breakthrough for therapeutic microrobots.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.