Imaging of small animals has played an indispensable role in preclinical research by providing high-dimensional physiological, pathological and phenotypic insights with clinical relevance. Yet, pure optical imaging suffers from either shallow penetration (up to ~1–2 mm) or a poor depth-to-resolution ratio (~3), and non-optical techniques for whole-body imaging of small animals lack either spatiotemporal resolution or functional contrast. Here, we demonstrate that stand-alone single-impulse panoramic photoacoustic computed tomography (SIP-PACT) mitigates these limitations by combining high spatiotemporal resolution (125 μm in-plane resolution, 50 μs per frame data acquisition and 50 Hz frame rate), deep penetration (48 mm cross-sectional width in vivo), anatomical, dynamical and functional contrasts, and full-view fidelity. Using SIP-PACT, we imaged in vivo whole-body dynamics of small animals in real time and obtained clear sub-organ anatomical and functional details. We tracked unlabelled circulating melanoma cells and imaged the vasculature and functional connectivity of whole rat brains. SIP-PACT holds great potential for both preclinical imaging and clinical translation.

中文翻译：

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高时空分辨率的小动物全身动力学的单脉冲全景光声计算机断层扫描

通过提供与临床相关的高角度生理，病理和表型见解，小动物的成像在临床前研究中发挥了不可或缺的作用。但是，纯光学成像的穿透力很弱（最大〜1-2 mm）或深度分辨率（〜3）很差，而用于小动物全身成像的非光学技术缺乏时空分辨率或功能对比。在这里，我们证明了独立的单脉冲全景光声计算机断层扫描（SIP-PACT）通过结合高时空分辨率（125μm面内分辨率，每帧数据采集50μs和50 Hz帧频）减轻了这些限制穿透（体内48毫米横截面宽度），解剖学，动力学和功能上的对比以及全视图保真度。使用SIP-PACT，我们实时成像了小动物的体内全身动态，并获得了清晰的亚器官解剖学和功能细节。我们追踪了未标记的循环黑素瘤细胞，并对整个大鼠大脑的脉管系统和功能连通性进行了成像。SIP-PACT在临床前成像和临床翻译方面都具有巨大的潜力。