A model to calculate microstreaming-shear stress generated by oscillating microbubbles on the cell membrane in sonoporation

The shear stress exerted on the cell membrane is an important factor in sonoporation. However, almost all previous calculations of shear stress were based on the Rooney's assumption, which is not applicable for the sonoporation experiments. In the article, to construct the microstreaming-shear stress model in sonoporation, it theoretically analyzed the microstreaming-shear stress exerted on the cell membrane generated by oscillating microbubble based on Nyborg's acoustic streaming theory. And the response of the model was compared with that of the sonoporation experiment. Cells were exposed by 1MHz 150kPa ultrasound in the presence of SonoVue (R) microbubbles. The sonoporated cells were labeled by fluorescent markers and detected by fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. The theoretically analyzed microstreaming-shear stress was in accordance with the cell experimental result. Although some minor factors are ignored when building the model to calculate the microstreaming-shear stress, the model was still reasonable.