Intense focused ultrasound stimulation can safely stimulate inflamed subcutaneous tissue and assess allodynia.

Background: Potential peripheral sources of deep pain can require invasive evocative tests for their assessment. Here we perform research whose ultimate goal is development of a non-invasive evocative test for deep painful tissue.

Methods: We used a rat model of inflammation to show that intense focused ultrasound (iFU) differentially stimulates inflamed versus control tissue and can identify allodynia.