Photoacoustic computed tomography of mechanical HIFU-induced vascular injury

Tri Vu; Yuqi Tang; Mucong Li; Georgii Sankin; Shanshan Tang; Shigao Chen; Pei Zhong; Junjie Yao

doi:10.1364/BOE.426660

Photoacoustic computed tomography of mechanical HIFU-induced vascular injury

Biomed Opt Express. 2021 Aug 10;12(9):5489-5498. doi: 10.1364/BOE.426660. eCollection 2021 Sep 1.

Authors

Tri Vu¹, Yuqi Tang¹, Mucong Li¹, Georgii Sankin², Shanshan Tang³, Shigao Chen³, Pei Zhong², Junjie Yao¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
³ Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN 55905, USA.

Abstract

Mechanical high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has been used for cancer treatment and drug delivery. Existing monitoring methods for mechanical HIFU therapies such as MRI and ultrasound imaging often suffer from high cost, poor spatial-temporal resolution, and/or low sensitivity to tissue's hemodynamic changes. Evaluating vascular injury during mechanical HIFU treatment, therefore, remains challenging. Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is a promising tool to meet this need. Intrinsically sensitive to optical absorption, PACT provides high-resolution imaging of blood vessels using hemoglobin as the endogenous contrast. In this study, we have developed an integrated HIFU-PACT system for detecting vascular rupture in mechanical HIFU treatment. We have demonstrated singular value decomposition for enhancing hemorrhage detection. We have validated the HIFU-PACT performance on phantoms and in vivo animal tumor models. We expect that PACT-HIFU will find practical applications in oncology research using small animal models.