Achieving High-Performance Transcranial Ultrasound Transmission Through Mie and Fano Resonance in Flexible...

Transcranial ultrasound holds great potential in medical applications. However, the effective transmission of ultrasound through the skull remains challenging due to the acoustic impedance mismatch, as well as the non-uniform thickness, and the curved surface. To overcome these challenges, this work introduces an innovative Mie-resonance flexible metamaterial (MRFM), which consists of periodically arranged low-speed micropillars embedded within a high-speed flexible substrate. The MRFM generates Mie-resonance, which couples with the skull to form Fano resonance, thereby enhancing ultrasound transmittance through the skull. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed resonance solution significantly increases transcranial ultrasound transmittance from 33.7% to 75.2% at 0.309 MHz. For the fabrication of the MRFM, porous nickel foam is used as the Mie micropillars, and agarose hydrogel serves as the flexible substrate. Experimental results demonstrate enhanced ultrasound transmittance from 20.6% to 73.3% at 0.33 MHz with the MRFM, which shows good agreement with the simulation results, further validating the effectiveness of the design. The simplicity, tunability, and flexibility of the MRFM represent a significant breakthrough, addressing the limitations of conventional rigid metamaterials. This work lays a solid theoretical and experimental foundation for advancing the clinical application of transcranial ultrasound stimulation and neuromodulation.