July 2019
Spotlight Summary by Kanwarpal Singh
Shape-adapting panoramic photoacoustic endomicroscopy
High-resolution deep tissue vascular imaging is critical in early detection of colorectal and gastrointestinal cancer. Several techniques based on light or sound have been developed to map vascularization in the gastrointestinal tract. Light-based techniques such as confocal microscopy, narrow-band imaging, optical coherence tomography, etc., provide excellent resolution but suffer from poor tissue penetration depth (up to 1–2 mm). Sound-based techniques such as Doppler ultrasound can image blood vessels deep inside the tissue up to a few centimeters, but suffer from poor resolution. A combination of the high-resolution optical techniques and deep-imaging ultra sound techniques would be an invaluable tool in cancer detection, and this is exactly what photoacoustic imaging has achieved. The authors of this work present a shape-adapting, balloon-based photoacoustic endoscopic device, which addresses several practical clinical challenges and brings the clinical adaptation of this technique one step closer. In the near future, with a few more improvements, we hope to see this technique in clinics, aiding doctors to see clearer and better pictures of early stage tumors in the gastrointestinal tract.
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Article Information
Shape-adapting panoramic photoacoustic endomicroscopy
Kedi Xiong, Wei Wang, Ting Guo, Zhen Yuan, and Sihua Yang
Opt. Lett. 44(11) 2681-2684 (2019) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF