Development of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) for transcranial ultrasound stimulation of mouse

Abstract

Transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) method has been regarded as a promising tool for brain stimulation because of its noninvasive property and high spatial resolution. Before the clinical trial, conducting the animal experiments with mouse which has many models for human diseases are necessary. But the mouse should be fixed or under anesthesia for TUS because of the big and heavy ultrasound transducer. In this thesis, we solve the issues by fabricating a capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) device based on MEMS technology. It is described that the process of designing and fabricating a device with a center frequency, size, focal length, ultrasonic intensity, and weight less than 1g to fit the structure of mice. In addition, we analyzed the fabricated device and stimulate the mouse brain using it. Ultimately, we attached the device to the mouse head tightly and safely, and applied the TUS to mouse which is in freely moving state.