Ultrasound Tracking of the Acoustically Actuated Microswimmer.

Objective: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ultrasound tracking strategy for the acoustically actuated bubble-based microswimmer.

Methods: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusion: Ultrasound tracking is an accurate and reliable approach to track the motion of the acoustically actuated microswimmers.

Significance: 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.