Ultrasound-guided photoacoustic imaging for the selective detection of EGFR-expressing breast cancer and lymph node metastases

Meihua Zhang; Hoe Suk Kim; Tiefeng Jin; Ann Yi; Woo Kyung Moon

doi:10.1364/BOE.7.001920

Ultrasound-guided photoacoustic imaging for the selective detection of EGFR-expressing breast cancer and lymph node metastases

Biomed Opt Express. 2016 Apr 19;7(5):1920-31. doi: 10.1364/BOE.7.001920. eCollection 2016 May 1.

Authors

Meihua Zhang¹, Hoe Suk Kim², Tiefeng Jin³, Ann Yi⁴, Woo Kyung Moon⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Science and Radiology, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, 103 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea; Contributed equally.
² Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea; Contributed equally.
³ Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea.
⁴ Seoul National University Hospital HealthCare System Gangnam Center, 152 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06236, South Korea; an_nie@naver.com.
⁵ Department of Science and Radiology, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, 103 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea; Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, South Korea; moonwk@snu.ac.kr.

Abstract

We assessed the use of ultrasound (US)-guided photoacoustic imaging (PAI) and anti-EGFR antibody-conjugated gold nanorods (anti-EGFR-GNs) to non-invasively detect EGFR-expressing primary tumor masses and regional lymph node (LN) metastases in breast tumor mice generated by injecting MCF-7 (EGFR-negative) or MDA-MB-231 (EGFR-positive) human breast cells using a preclinical Vevo 2100 LAZR Imaging system. Anti-EGFR-GNs provided a significant enhancement in the PA signal in MDA-MB-231 tumor and the axillary LN metastases relative to MCF-7 tumor and non-LN metastases. We demonstrated that US-guided PAI using anti-EGFR-GNs is highly sensitive for the selective visualization of EGFR-expressing breast primary tumors as well as LN micrometastases.

Keywords: (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.4580) Optical diagnostics for medicine; (170.5120) Photoacoustic imaging; (170.7170) Ultrasound.