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.

中文翻译：

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机械 HIFU 诱导的血管损伤的光声计算机断层扫描

机械高强度聚焦超声 (HIFU) 已用于癌症治疗和药物输送。用于机械HIFU疗法，如MRI和超声成像现有监测方法经常遭受成本高，差时空分辨率，和/或低灵敏度到组织的血流动力学变化。因此，评估机械 HIFU 治疗期间的血管损伤仍然具有挑战性。光声计算机断层扫描 (PACT) 是满足这一需求的有前途的工具。PACT 对光吸收具有固有敏感性，可使用血红蛋白作为内源性对比剂提供高分辨率的血管成像。在这项研究中，我们开发了一个集成的 HIFU-PACT 系统，用于检测机械 HIFU 治疗中的血管破裂。我们已经展示了奇异值分解以增强出血检测。体内动物肿瘤模型。我们预计 PACT-HIFU 将在使用小动物模型的肿瘤学研究中找到实际应用。