Abstract
Here, we report a new method using combined magnetic resonance (MR)–Photoacoustic (PA)–Thermoacoustic (TA) imaging techniques, and demonstrate its unique ability for in vivo cancer detection using tumor-bearing mice. Circular scanning TA and PA imaging systems were used to recover the dielectric and optical property distributions of three colon carcinoma bearing mice While a 7.0-T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit with a mouse body volume coil was utilized for high resolution structural imaging of the same mice. Three plastic tubes filled with soybean sauce were used as fiducial markers for the co-registration of MR, PA and TA images. The resulting fused images provided both enhanced tumor margin and contrast relative to the surrounding normal tissues. In particular, some finger-like protrusions extending into the surrounding tissues were revealed in the MR/TA infused images. These results show that the tissue functional optical and dielectric properties provided by PA and TA images along with the anatomical structure by MRI in one picture make accurate tumor identification easier. This combined MR–PA–TA-imaging strategy has the potential to offer a clinically useful triple-modality tool for accurate cancer detection and for intraoperative surgical navigation.
Highlights
Arecent cancer statistics study indicated that cancer has become a major public health problem worldwide, and a total of 1,665,540 new cancer cases and 585,720 cancer deaths are predicted to occur in the United States in 2014.1 cancer has a high morbidity and mortality, its early detection can e®ectively combat the increased incidence and death rates
For magnetic resonance (MR)–PA–TA image fusion, the tomographically recovered photoacoustic tomography (PAT) and thermoacoustic tomography (TAT) slices corresponded to the circular scanning plane of the transducer, which is similar to the coronal plane for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Since early tumor development is always accompanied by higher water content and induced larger local conductivity,[29] the tumor is notably detected in TAT image [Fig. 2(c)]
Summary
Arecent cancer statistics study indicated that cancer has become a major public health problem worldwide, and a total of 1,665,540 new cancer cases and 585,720 cancer deaths are predicted to occur in the United States in 2014.1 cancer has a high morbidity and mortality, its early detection can e®ectively combat the increased incidence and death rates. Until now, there has not existed a noninvasive and cost e®ective single-modality imaging method that is capable of providing all the anatomic structural and functional/physiologic information needed for early cancer diagnosis. Some variations of MRI such as functional MRI (fMRI) have the ability of physiological imaging, fMRI can provide only the concentration of deoxygenated hemoglobin and blood °ow, and is not applicable to cancer detection due to its extremely low sensitivity. A physiologic and/or pathologic imaging modality, such as PET,[6] can be integrated with MRI for complementary anatomical and physiological detection. A recent milestone is that MRI/PET combination has been used to image human brain.[7] Such achievement suggests that multi-modality imaging of tissue structure and function will play a major role in the management of human diseases in the coming decades
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