Development of an ultrasound-optical hybrid modality preclinical imaging tool

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Preclinical animal models are used extensively in cancer research to evaluate drug efficacy and toxicity and to better understand the disease's complex fundamental underlying processes. In vivo imaging studies enable researchers to longitudinally assess tumor presence, functional status, and response the therapy without the need to sacrifice animals for each read point. Anatomical imaging modalities (MRI, CT, and Ultrasound) enable the visualization and assessment of tissue structures, which are necessary to localize the signals acquired via the molecular imaging modalities (PET, SPECT, and Optical), which assess the functional status of tissues (tumor metabolic demand, molecular signal expression, drug biodistribution, etc.). Ultrasound is the least expensive of the anatomical modalities with the fastest acquisition time, but there is no ultrasound product on the market for whole body imaging, thus researchers often resort to MR or CT based anatomical imaging for their dual modality studies. MR and CT imaging studies are slow, expensive, and reduce study throughput. We propose to build a high throughput and low cost ultrasound-optical hybrid modality system which could speed up preclinical drug research, as well as drive down costs. Our company, SonoVol, is the result of several years of strong collaborative academic-industry research between Dr. Paul Dayton's ultrasound imaging lab at UNC and Dr. Stephen Aylward's image analysis lab at Kitware. Unlike MR or CT, our SonoVol device is an inexpensive and benchtop imaging system which can capture a whole body mouse image in less than 5 minutes. We are proposing to build the after- market hardware and software components necessary to transfer a mouse between existing commercially available imaging systems to create a fusion between a whole-body anatomical ultrasound image, and a bioluminescence image. We will test this system in both a controlled in vitro environment, as well as a pilot small animal study implementing SonoVol's proprietary hardware. This SonoVol device allows any ultrasound probe to be manipulated around an animal to build up a cohesive whole-body 3D volume, as well as leverage several powerful image processing and analysis tools to align the two modalities, allowing one-to-one mapping between the anatomical and functional images. Furthermore, it will be possible to target ultrasound images, on-the-fly, to regions in the mouse's body which have strong bioluminescence signal expression. The next phase of commercialization of this product will be to build a dedicated system which does not require a physical transfer of the animal between systems, thereby further increasing throughput.