Biomedical photoacoustics beyond thermal expansion using triggered nanodroplet vaporization for contrast-enhanced imaging

Katheryne Wilson, Kimberly Homan and Stanislav Emelianov ()
Additional contact information
Katheryne Wilson: University of Texas at Austin
Kimberly Homan: University of Texas at Austin
Stanislav Emelianov: University of Texas at Austin

Nature Communications, 2012, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Since being discovered by Alexander Bell, photoacoustics may again be seeing major resurgence in biomedical imaging. Photoacoustics is a non-ionizing, functional imaging modality capable of high contrast images of optical absorption at depths significantly greater than traditional optical imaging techniques. Optical contrast agents have been used to extend photoacoustics to molecular imaging. Here we introduce an exogenous contrast agent that utilizes vaporization for photoacoustic signal generation, providing significantly higher signal amplitude than that from the traditionally used mechanism, thermal expansion. Our agent consists of liquid perfluorocarbon nanodroplets with encapsulated plasmonic nanoparticles, entitled photoacoustic nanodroplets. Upon pulsed laser irradiation, liquid perfluorocarbon undergoes a liquid-to-gas phase transition generating giant photoacoustic transients from these dwarf nanoparticles. Once triggered, the gaseous phase provides ultrasound contrast enhancement. We demonstrate in phantom and animal studies that photoacoustic nanodroplets act as dual-contrast agents for both photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging through optically triggered vaporization.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1627 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:3:y:2012:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms1627

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1627

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().