Optical and Acoustic Imaging for Interventional Device Guidance

医用针头是广泛的诊断和治疗干预措施的核心，包括组织活检和麻醉注射。准确有效地到达深层组织目标是非常具有挑战性的。许多针头的插入都是通过体外的超声成像系统来完成的，通过针头将触觉传递到医生的手上。然而，这些技术通常不足以直接检测组织目标，因此存在针头放置不准确的风险。例如，在前列腺活检中，可疑的癌性病变可能在超声成像中不可见，因此活检可能从错误的位置获得。作为伦敦大学学院医学物理与生物工程系的一名新讲师，我的主要目标之一是改造医用针头，使它们能够提供组织的分子信息，从而显著提高针头手术的准确性。利用光通信技术的最新进展，这些针头将向其尖端的组织传递短暂的光脉冲。利用光声效应，光脉冲的吸收会产生声波，声波可以被检测到，并实时转化为分子吸收的图像。该研究项目由EPSRC第一笔拨款启动，最终将导致广泛的医疗设备的发展，这些设备可以直接检测组织目标和关键结构，以改善临床结果并降低并发症的风险。

Medical needles are central to a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, including tissue biopsies and injections of anaesthesia. Accurately and efficiently reaching deep tissue targets can be very challenging. Many needle insertions are performed with ultrasound imaging systems that are exterior to the body, and with the sense of touch that is relayed via the needles to a physician's hands. These techniques are often insufficient for directly detecting the tissue targets, however, and consequently there is a risk of inaccurate needle placement. For instance, with biopsies of the prostate, the suspected cancerous lesions may not be visible with ultrasound imaging, and consequently the biopsies may be obtained from incorrect locations. As a new Lecturer at the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering at UCL, one of my primary objectives is to transform medical needles so that they that can provide molecular information about tissue and thereby significantly improve the accuracy of needle-based procedures. Leveraging recent advances in optical telecommunications technologies, these needles will deliver brief light pulses to tissues at their tips. By virtue of the photoacoustic effect, absorption of light pulses will generate sound waves that can be detected and converted into images of molecular absorption in real-time. The research programme kick-started by an EPSRC First Grant will ultimately lead to the development of a broad range of medical devices that could directly detect tissue targets and critical structures to improve clinical outcomes and decrease the risks of complications.