High intensity focused ultrasound as a tool for tissue engineering: Application to cartilage

• High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) may be appropriated for controlled heating of tissue volumes, which could be used to alter tissue properties of engineered grafts during in vitro culture.
• HIFU treatment of gel phantoms with incorporated egg white showed a decrease in permeability and increase in stiffness in the affected regions.
• Cell death from heating remained localized to the thermally affected region over time.
• It is expected that this heating technology may have many applications across many tissue types in the field of tissue engineering.

This article promotes the use of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) as a tool for affecting the local properties of tissue engineered constructs in vitro. HIFU is a low cost, non-invasive technique used for eliciting focal thermal elevations at variable depths within tissues. HIFU can be used to denature proteins within constructs, leading to decreased permeability and potentially increased local stiffness. Adverse cell viability effects remain restricted to the affected area. The methods described in this article are explored through the scope of articular cartilage tissue engineering and the fabrication of osteochondral constructs, but may be applied to the engineering of a variety of different tissues.

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