Application of multispectral photoacoustic technique for contrast agent imaging and its prospects

Abstract

Photoacoustic imaging visualizes optical absorbers inside biological tissues with spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging by detecting ultrasound produced from the optical absorbers those absorbed excitation light. By using the excitation light with absorption wavelength of hemoglobin, the technique can offer high contrast image of vascular networks, and application for lesion detection have been discussed. Furthermore, photoacoustic imaging can detect also contrast agents and can offer additional information such as accumulation of the contrast agents in lesion. In addition, to visualize the lesions specifically, contrast agents those are targeted to specific molecules associated with lesions have been researched. Thus, we are developing multispectral photoacoustic method to separately image hemoglobin and the contrast agent. To sensitively image the contrast agents, imaging condition was discussed by evaluating photoacoustic signal generation characteristics of them. In this presentation we would like to talk about our current results and prospects.