Identifying intestinal fibrosis and inflammation by spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging: an animal study in vivo

• Published in: Biomedical optics express Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 1590 - 1600
• Main Authors: Zhu, Yunhao, Johnson, Laura A, Huang, Ziyi, Rubin, Jonathan M, Yuan, Jie, Lei, Hao, Ni, Jun, Wang, Xueding, Higgins, Peter D R, Xu, Guan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Optical Society of America 01-04-2018
• Subjects: (170.6510) Spectroscopy, tissue diagnostics; (170.5120) Photoacoustic imaging; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.7170) Ultrasound
• ISSN: 2156-7085; 2156-7085
• DOI: 10.1364/boe.9.001590

Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by obstructing intestinal strictures. Conventional imaging modalities can identify the strictures but cannot characterize whether a stricture is predominantly inflammatory or fibrotic. The purpose of this study is to examine the capability of photoacoustic (PA) imaging to characterize intestinal fibrosis and inflammation
. Intestinal strictures in a rat model of CD were imaged with a PA-ultrasound parallel imaging system. Internal and external illuminations were attempted, both with transcutaneous PA signal reception. The PA signal magnitudes acquired at wavelengths targeting individual molecular components and the derived functional information showed significant differences between the inflammatory and fibrotic strictures, consistent with histological inflammation and fibrosis.