Detection of rheumatoid arthritis in the finger joints by thermoacoustic tomography

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the leading cause of disability among people over 50-year-old. However, the diagnosis of RA is a complex problem because of the complexity of symptoms and structures. While current clinical imaging techniques play an important role in the diagnosis of RA, they do have several limitations. As an emerging hybrid modality, thermoacoustic tomography (TAT) provides high electromagnetic contrast and high ultrasonic resolution. Our early work showed that TAT could provide high quality anatomic structures of peripheral joints in healthy human fingers. In this study, we applied TAT to the detection of RA in the finger joint. Ultrasound imaging (US) was performed to verify TAT findings. The TAT images of the RA joint displayed abnormalities compared to the healthy ones, and they matched well with the US images. The initial results demonstrate that TAT has the potential to be conducive to detection of RA in vivo, which also provide a foundation for its clinical application to the diagnosis of RA.