Abstract

Distinguishing the tumor from the background neo-plastic tissue is challenging for cancer surgery such as surgical resection of glioma. Attempts have been made to use visible or fluorescent markers to delineate the tumors during surgery. However, the systemic injection of the dyes requires high dose, resulting in negative side effects. A novel method to delineate rat brain tumors intra-operatively, as well as post-operatively, using a highly sensitive photoacoustic imaging technique enhanced by tumor targeting blue nanoparticle as contrast agent is demonstrated. The nanoparticles are made of polyacrylamide (PAA) matrix with covalently linked Coomassie-Blue dye. They contain 7.0% dye and the average size is 80nm. Their surface was conjugated with F3 peptide for active tumor targeting. These nanoparticles are nontoxic, chemically inert and have long plasma circulation lifetime, making them suitable as nanodevices for imaging using photoacoustics. Experiments on phantoms and rat brains tumors ex-vivo demonstrate the high sensitivity of photoacoustic imaging in delineating the tumor, containing contrast agent at concentrations too low to be visualized by eye. The control tumors without nanoparticles did not show any enhanced signal. This study shows that photoacoustic imaging facilitated with the nanoparticle contrast agent could contribute to future surgical procedures for glioma.

© 2011 OSA/SPIE