Monitoring of in-vitro ultrasonic stimulation of cells by numerical modeling

Ultrasound stimulation of living tissues is a promising technique that can be safely applied for regenerative treatments. However, the ultrasound-induced mechanotransduction is still not well understood because of the large number of parameters involved at different scales and their difficult experimental accessibility. In this context, in-vitro studies may help to gain insight into the interaction between ultrasound and cells. Nevertheless, to conduct a reliable analysis of ultrasound effects on cell culture, the monitoring of the acoustic intensity delivered to the cells is of prime interest. Thanks to the development of an innovative custom experimental set-up inspired from ultrasound stimulation of bone regeneration conditions, major disturbing phenomena such as multiple reflections and standing wave formation inside the Petri dish are eliminated. Thus, the level of ultrasound stimulation, especially, in terms of spatial average temporal average intensity (I_SATA), delivered to the cells can be monitored. Then, to properly estimate the level of ultrasound stimulation, a finite element model representing the experimental in-vitro configuration is developed. The numerical model manages on capturing the characteristics of the experimentally measured acoustic intensity distribution as illustrated by the experimental and numerical I_SATA values of 42.3 and 45.8 mW/cm² respectively, i.e. a relative difference of 8%. The numerical model would therefore allow exploring data inaccessible to experimental measurement and parametric studies to be carried out and facilitates the investigation of different virtual experimental configurations.