The UK Photoacoustic Standardisation (PAS) Network

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Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is an emerging biomedical imaging technology that combines the high contrast of optical imaging with the spatio-temporal resolution of ultrasound, providing an exciting new platform for localised imaging in both animal models and patients. The UK has a strong track record in pioneering PAI, from the creation of new hardware to advancing the state-of-the-art of the technology (e.g. at University College London and King's College London), through the conception of new contrast agents for targeted molecular PAI (e.g. at University of Liverpool and University of Leeds) to the validation and application of PAI in living subjects, including animal and human clinical trials (e.g. at University of Cambridge and University of Manchester). These efforts have already received substantial UKRI and charity funding, as well as investment from industry, and are poised to deliver impact in patients, with potential to aid in studies of cancer, Crohn's disease and arthritis, as well as other medical conditions.Translating the technology from the laboratory into the clinic requires technical and biological validation studies that have so far been hindered by a lack of widely accepted test objects and methods, representing an area of unmet research need. Accurate, reproducible and standardised comparisons of the performance of different instruments are vital for quality assurance and control in a hospital setting, as well as for evaluation of the precision and accuracy with which PAI measurements can be made. We propose here to unite the multidisciplinary UK PAI community into an EPSRC Network to stimulate new efforts in this research area, by bringing together researchers, government laboratories and industrial partners and enabling mobility and ideas exchange between these stakeholders. By forming a new multidisciplinary research community encompassing technology and methodology development as well as preclinical and clinical applications of PAI, we anticipate significant opportunities for future collaborations and new multidisciplinary research proposals that will drive the field of PAI towards application in healthcare systems. By training of the next-generation of PAI researchers and equipping them with the tools of standardisation, we expect the activities of UK-PAS to permeate the PAI community globally. The primary impact will be to more rapidly advance clinical translation of PAI.