In an effort to develop an optical-acoustical understanding of ultrasound contrast agent microbubble dynamics in a micro-environment that resembles blood vessels, this thesis presents experimental work on optical trapping and acoustical probing of ultrasound contrast agent microbubbles confined in regenerated cellulose capillaries. First, we showed by acoustical means that the pressure threshold of an individual microbubble shell rupture increases significantly when confined in regenerated cellulose capillaries. We report that the shell rupture threshold in regenerated cellulose capillaries increased by at least 0.3 MPa from 0.8 MPa for unconfined microbubbles. Second, we achieved optical trapping and manipulation of ultrasound contrast agent microbubbles confined in capillaries using Hermite-Gaussian laser beams.
