Fig. 3: BBB disruption by site and closure dynamics. | Nature Communications

Fig. 3: BBB disruption by site and closure dynamics.

From: Repeated blood–brain barrier opening with a nine-emitter implantable ultrasound device in combination with carboplatin in recurrent glioblastoma: a phase I/II clinical trial

Fig. 3

Post-sonication MRI was performed for all patients enrolled on trial after the first three sonication sessions to verify BBB opening. A A significant difference in sonication-induced T1 contrast enhancement was found between sites due to MRI acquisition parameters and gadolinium contrast agent used, with Site 4 using Gadavist® and all other sites using Dotarem®. N = 61 sonications (in 27 different patients from cohorts C and D). Site 1: N = 22; Site 2: N = 3; Site 3: N = 2; Site 4: N = 16; Site 5: N = 15; Site 6: N = 3. The violin plots indicate the median (with dot), first and third quartiles (gray line), and min and max (colored contour). ANOVA testing was performed with post hoc Tukey–kramer (site 1 and 4: p = 0.0004). B The time between sonication and gadolinium bolus for T1w image acquisition was 10–77 min at Site 1, which was due to the availability of MRI after sonication. There was a significant negative correlation between enhancement intensity and sonication to gadolinium injection time for treatments performed at this site (in 10 different patients from cohort C and D treated in site 1, p = 0.05), with an exponential decay fit indicating a half-closure time for the BBB of 1.3 h. The dashed line indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI) for the exponential decay fit. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

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