Combining light and sound with nanoparticles to identify and treat head and neck cancers

Abstract

High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a non-invasive and non-ionising approach used primarily for the thermal ablation of cancerous tumours. Even though it has been in clinical use for over 30 years, it has yet to achieve widespread use. Two key limitations for this approach are long treatment times and a difficulty in getting real-time feedback on treatment efficacy. One technique that could help with these limitations is a combination of HIFU, pulse laser illumination, and cancer targeted nanoparticles. When nanoparticles are simultaneously exposed to these modalities, vapour bubbles form, providing a controllable way to nucleate cavitation in the target location. Acoustic emissions from inertial cavitation can be monitored via passive cavitation detection and/or mapping. This approach provides direct localisation of cancerous regions and has greater sensitivity compared with current photoacoustic imaging. Once the cancerous regions have been localised, they can be ablated by HIFU, which is known ...