Carotid ultrasound in-vivo strain imaging: is there a liposomes induced vascular effect?

Liposomes are nanoparticles that are gaining increasing importance as targeting agents, molecular probes, and drug carriers. In this work, we evaluated the vascular effect of a liposomes bolus injected intravenously in mice. Ultrasound high-resolution cineloops of the mice’s carotid artery were acquired and used to measure the radial and longitudinal strains thanks to a speckle tracking algorithm. Control mice were injected with a bolus of saline solution. The strain imaging revealed that higher amplitude displacements were observable after the bolus injection of liposomes, whereas after the injection of saline, the amplitude displacements did not change significantly. This study is a first step for the quantification of the vascular endothelial effect of liposomes injection.