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The Microbubble Acoustic Characterisation Chamber (MACC) is a chamber designed to facilitate the in-vitro characterisation of contrast agents. The chamber allows the incorporation of upto 6 single element NDT transducers. Currently, housings exist for Olympus Videoscan transducers in the standard case style. The transducer housing holds the transducer at a fixed ~35 mm distance from the centre of the chamber. In addition to the transducer housings, the chamber features inlet and outlet housings to allow flow focusing of the sample in the chamber. Finally, a viewing window is incorporated to give a limited view inside the chamber. It is recommended that researchers interested in adopting the chamber, read the paper describing the original chamber and an experiment to measure the acoustic scattering of SonoVue®¹.
The Olympus Videoscan transducers described in the original paper are:
| Name | Description | Part No. | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|
| V323-SU | Immersion Transducer, 2.25 MHz, 0.25" Element Diameter, Standard Case Style, Straight UHF Connector | U8423048 | 2 |
| V384-SU | Immersion Transducer, 3.5 MHz, 0.25" Element Diameter, Standard Case Style, Straight UHF Connector | U8423070 | 2 |
| V310-SU | Immersion Transducer, 5 MHz, 0.25" Element Diameter, Standard Case Style, Straight UHF Connector | U8423017 | 2 |
The original MACC was manufactured using an Objet1000 Multi-Material PolyJet 3D Printer in Vero™ material. It is recommended that test parts are printed prior to printing the full design because slight alterations to the original designs may be required to account for variations in manufacturing tolerances. Whilst the original MACC was printed in white material, clear material may give more visibility within the chamber. This would be helpful, for instance, in locating air bubbles that require removal prior to an experiment.
The assembly guide can be found here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
[1] Smith, E.; Nie, L.; McLaughlan, J.; Clegg, H.; Carpenter, T.; Cowell, D.; Evans, S.; Frangi, A.F.; Freear, S. An Open Access Chamber Designed for the Acoustic Characterisation of Microbubbles. Appl. Sci. 2022, 12, 1818. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12041818
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.