Visualization of murine lymph vessels using photoacoustic imaging with contrast agents

Ryo Nagaoka; Takuya Tabata; Shin Yoshizawa; Shin-Ichiro Umemura; Yoshifumi Saijo

doi:10.1016/j.pacs.2018.01.001

Visualization of murine lymph vessels using photoacoustic imaging with contrast agents

Photoacoustics. 2018 Jan 31:9:39-48. doi: 10.1016/j.pacs.2018.01.001. eCollection 2018 Mar.

Authors

Ryo Nagaoka¹, Takuya Tabata¹, Shin Yoshizawa², Shin-Ichiro Umemura², Yoshifumi Saijo¹

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Imaging Laboratory, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-05 Aramaki Aza Aoba, Aobaku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
² Ultrasound Enhanced Nanomedicine Laboratory, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-05 Aramaki Aza Aoba, Aobaku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.

Abstract

Metastasis frequently occurs even in the early stage of breast cancer. This research studied the feasibility of using photoacoustic (PA) imaging for identifying metastasis in the lymph vessels of mice. The photoacoustic efficiency of various contrast agents was investigated, and the influence of scattered light was evaluated by using a lymph vessel phantom. The lymph vessels of mice were then visualized using the selected contrast agents: indocyanine green (ICG) and gold nanorods (AuNR). The attenuation of the PA imaging was -1.90 dB/mm, whereas that of the fluorescence imaging was -4.45 dB/mm. The results indicate the potential of identifying sentinel lymph nodes by using PA imaging with these contrast agents.

Keywords: 3D-real-time imaging systems; Contrast agents; Light wavelength dependence of photoacoustic signals; Lymph vessels; Photoacoustic tomography; Ultrasonic transducer arrays.