Ultrasound-guided photoacoustic imaging of lymph nodes with biocompatible gold nanoparticles as a novel contrast agent (Conference Presentation)

In-Cheol Sun; Diego Dumani; Stanislav Y. Emelianov

doi:10.1117/12.2256234

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24 April 2017 Ultrasound-guided photoacoustic imaging of lymph nodes with biocompatible gold nanoparticles as a novel contrast agent (Conference Presentation)

In-Cheol Sun, Diego Dumani, Stanislav Y. Emelianov

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Proceedings Volume 10078, Colloidal Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications XII; 100780E (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2256234
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2017, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

A key step in staging cancer is the diagnosis of metastasis that spreads through lymphatic system. For this reason, researchers develop various methods of sentinel lymph node mapping that often use a radioactive tracer. This study introduces a safe, cost-effective, high-resolution, high-sensitivity, and real-time method of visualizing the sentinel lymph node: ultrasound-guided photoacoustic (US/PA) imaging augmented by a contrast agent. In this work, we use clearable gold nanoparticles covered by a biocompatible polymer (glycol chitosan) to enhance cellular uptake by macrophages abundant in lymph nodes. We incubate macrophages with glycol-chitosan-coated gold nanoparticles (0.05 mg Au/ml), and then fix them with paraformaldehyde solution for an analysis of in vitro dark-field microscopy and cell phantom. The analysis shows enhanced cellular uptake of nanoparticles by macrophages and strong photoacoustic signal from labeled cells in tissue-mimicking cell phantoms consisting gelatin solution (6 %) with silica gel (25 μm, 0.3%) and fixed macrophages (13 X 105 cells). The in-vivo US/PA imaging of cervical lymph nodes in healthy mice (nu/nu, female, 5 weeks) indicates a strong photoacoustic signal from a lymph node 10 minutes post-injection (2.5 mg Au/ml, 80 μl). The signal intensity and the nanoparticle-labeled volume of tissue within the lymph node continues to increase until 4 h post-injection. Histological analysis further confirms the accumulation of gold nanoparticles within the lymph nodes. This work suggests the feasibility of molecular/cellular US/PA imaging with biocompatible gold nanoparticles as a photoacoustic contrast agent in the diagnosis of lymph-node-related diseases.

Conference Presentation

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In-Cheol Sun, Diego Dumani, and Stanislav Y. Emelianov "Ultrasound-guided photoacoustic imaging of lymph nodes with biocompatible gold nanoparticles as a novel contrast agent (Conference Presentation)", Proc. SPIE 10078, Colloidal Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications XII, 100780E (24 April 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2256234

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