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

根据最近的报告，加拿大的癌症病例正在上升，导致死亡率很高。因此，有必要开发新的治疗模式，以应对这种致命的疾病，实现早期诊断，增加治疗成功的机会，改善加拿大人的生活。金纳米颗粒的宽度大约是人类头发的1/100，000，可能为癌症治疗提供新的方法，特别是癌症热疗，它们可用于诱导细胞温度升高（> 45摄氏度），导致细胞死亡。加热应用中的主要挑战之一涉及精确的温度测量。当考虑生物系统时，这种复杂性显著增加，其中当前的温度感测方法不方便、不准确或昂贵。因此，需要开发新颖的非接触和非侵入式温度感测技术。我们建议使用太赫兹辐射（亚毫米波），位于电磁波谱的红外和微波区域之间。水是所有生物体的主要组成部分，其物理性质可随温度而变化。由于太赫兹波与水强烈相互作用，我们可以建立太赫兹-温度相关性并开发新型温度计。太赫兹辐射是非电离的，因此对于生物应用是安全的。它还能够穿透织物和绷带，因此可用于实时诊断和治疗。我们的主要目标是开发一种新颖的多模式方法，使用金纳米粒子和太赫兹辐射进行加热，成像和温度传感。我们的研究工作将在模拟人体组织的生物模型系统中得到验证。我们的目标还在于设计全新的方法，使用太赫兹热成像来测量这些组织中的热分布和温度图-从而基本上创建了第一个生物太赫兹成像温度计。我们相信，这项工作的潜在成功将有助于开发新的癌症治疗方法，并将改善加拿大人口的健康和生活质量。

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.