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Learning how how photo-acoustic imaging works and where it is used has been a relatively recent entrant into the field of medical and scientific study. One of its main potential advantages over current medical scanning techniques is that it could allow doctors to conduct complex scans on patients using devices which are hand-held, not the expensive and large equipment which magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) or X-ray computerized tomography require to be used effectively. The detail of the images that the technology produces is also much improved.
The technique has the capability to scan to depths of several centimetres in human tissue. This means that biopsy needles can be more accurately guided into the affected areas of a patient's body. The technique also has the potential use of being able to determine whether or not tumors in a patient's body are benign or malignant. The close monitoring of brain activity is another possible use, as is the examination of cells' gene expression.
The images that the technique generates are made by shining small pulses of light from lasers onto the tissue being scanned. As the cells in the tissues are heated by just a small amount - a few thousandths of a degree - which allows them expand and contract without causing them any damage.
Sound waves are transmitted as a result of this expansion and contraction, of the ultrasonic variety. These sound waves are then measured by sensors, who send the data they receive to a computer. This computer then constructs two or three-dimensional images using triangulation techniques.
The technology owes its development to work done by a Soviet scientist in the late 1980s. Alexander Oraevsky, who was at the time working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, was conducting research into tissue removal using lasers. He found that his samples also producing ultrasonic waves, and then began to examine who they could be used in other ways.
Photo-acoustic imaging can penetrate tissue to a depth of around seven centimetres, a far greater depth than the millimetre or so which current techniques such as confocal microscopy or optical-coherence tomography can currently operate.
The technique works due to the different ways different tissues absorb light. This also has other applications. Blood, for example, absorbs light differently depending upon whether it is oxygenated or not oxygenated. There is therefore a contrast agent contained within the technique, precluding the need to inject patients with dyes.
The detection of brain lesions is another possible future application for the technology, as different tissues in the brain have different optical absorption properties; experiments have been carried out on mice which demonstrate this.
Cancer is the illness that makes how photo-acoustic imaging works and where it is used such an exciting area of study with such great potential. The detection of tumors and their nature has been almost impossible without using surgery of some kind, and the kind of money and time saved by using new technologies is a fortunate side effect of being able to save the lives of many more people.
The technique has the capability to scan to depths of several centimetres in human tissue. This means that biopsy needles can be more accurately guided into the affected areas of a patient's body. The technique also has the potential use of being able to determine whether or not tumors in a patient's body are benign or malignant. The close monitoring of brain activity is another possible use, as is the examination of cells' gene expression.
The images that the technique generates are made by shining small pulses of light from lasers onto the tissue being scanned. As the cells in the tissues are heated by just a small amount - a few thousandths of a degree - which allows them expand and contract without causing them any damage.
Sound waves are transmitted as a result of this expansion and contraction, of the ultrasonic variety. These sound waves are then measured by sensors, who send the data they receive to a computer. This computer then constructs two or three-dimensional images using triangulation techniques.
The technology owes its development to work done by a Soviet scientist in the late 1980s. Alexander Oraevsky, who was at the time working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, was conducting research into tissue removal using lasers. He found that his samples also producing ultrasonic waves, and then began to examine who they could be used in other ways.
Photo-acoustic imaging can penetrate tissue to a depth of around seven centimetres, a far greater depth than the millimetre or so which current techniques such as confocal microscopy or optical-coherence tomography can currently operate.
The technique works due to the different ways different tissues absorb light. This also has other applications. Blood, for example, absorbs light differently depending upon whether it is oxygenated or not oxygenated. There is therefore a contrast agent contained within the technique, precluding the need to inject patients with dyes.
The detection of brain lesions is another possible future application for the technology, as different tissues in the brain have different optical absorption properties; experiments have been carried out on mice which demonstrate this.
Cancer is the illness that makes how photo-acoustic imaging works and where it is used such an exciting area of study with such great potential. The detection of tumors and their nature has been almost impossible without using surgery of some kind, and the kind of money and time saved by using new technologies is a fortunate side effect of being able to save the lives of many more people.
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