Volumetric multi-spectral optoacoustic tomography for high performance structural, functional, and molecular imaging

Abstract

Optoacoustic (or photoacoustic) imaging is an emerging hybrid modality that can deliver excellent endogenous and exogenous optical absorption contrasts from living tissues with excellent spatio-temporal resolution. Our state-of-the-art implementations of multi-spectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) are based on multi-wavelength excitation of tissues to visualize specific molecules within opaque tissues. As a result, the MSOT technology can noninvasively deliver structural (i.e., vascular anatomy, solid tumors, and organs), functional (i.e., total hemoglobin concentration, hemoglobin oxygen saturation, blood flow, pH, and metabolic rate of oxygen consumption), and molecular information from living tissues. For highly sensitive molecular optoacoustic imaging, a valuable tool for personalized medicine, exogenous contrast agents (e.g., organic dyes, metallic and nonmetallic nanoparticles, reporter genes, or fluorescence proteins) with biomarkers are commonly utilized. The talk will further introduce the new ...