"Teramometry" -A new non-invasive high-sensitivity biological thermal imaging technique

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According to recent reports, instances of cancer in Canada are on the rise leading to a high rate of mortality. As such, there exists a need to develop novel therapeutic paradigms to tackle this deadly disease and achieve early diagnosis, increasing the chance for therapeutic success and improving the life of Canadians. Gold nanoparticles, which are approximately 1/100,000th the width of a human hair, can potentially offer a new approach to cancer treatments particularly for cancer hyperthermia, where they can be used to induce a rise in cellular temperature (> 45 degrees Celsius) resulting in cellular death. One of the major challenges in heating applications involves precise temperature measurements. This complexity increases significantly when considering biological systems where current approaches to temperature sensing are inconvenient, inaccurate, or costly. Thus, there exists a need to develop novel non-contact and non-invasive temperature sensing technologies. We propose the use of terahertz radiation (submillimeter waves) that lies between the infrared and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The physical properties of water, a major component of all living organisms, can change as a function of temperature. Since terahertz waves strongly interact with water, we can establish a terahertz-temperature correlation and develop a novel thermometer. Terahertz radiation is non-ionizing and therefore safe for biological applications. It is also able to penetrate fabric and bandages and thus can be used for real-time diagnostics and therapeutics. Our main goal is to develop a novel and multimodal approach towards heating, imaging and temperature sensing using gold nanoparticles and terahertz radiation. Our research efforts will be validated in a biological model system, which mimics human tissue. We also aim to devise completely novel methods to measure heat distribution and temperature maps in these tissues, using terahertz thermal imaging - thus essentially creating the first biological terahertz imaging thermometer. We believe that the potential success of this work will contribute to the development of novel approaches towards cancer therapy and will improve the health and quality of life of the Canadian population.