The UK Photoacoustic Standardisation (PAS) Network

光声成像(PAI)是一种新兴的生物医学成像技术，它结合了光学成像的高对比度和超声的时空分辨率，为动物模型和患者的局部成像提供了一个令人兴奋的新平台。英国在PAI方面有着良好的先驱记录，从创造新的硬件到推进最先进的技术(例如伦敦大学学院和伦敦国王学院)，从针对靶向分子PAI的新造影剂的概念(例如利物浦大学和利兹大学)到PAI在活体对象中的验证和应用，包括动物和人类临床试验(例如剑桥大学和曼彻斯特大学)。这些努力已经得到了UKRI和慈善机构的大量资金，以及来自行业的投资，并准备对患者产生影响，有可能帮助癌症、克罗恩病和关节炎以及其他医疗条件的研究。将这项技术从实验室转化到临床需要技术和生物验证研究，但到目前为止，由于缺乏广泛接受的测试对象和方法，这些研究一直受到阻碍，这是一个尚未得到满足的研究需求领域。对不同仪器的性能进行准确、可重复性和标准化的比较对于医院环境下的质量保证和控制以及对PAI测量的精确度和准确度的评估至关重要。我们在这里建议将英国PAI的多学科社区联合成一个EPSRC网络，通过将研究人员、政府实验室和行业合作伙伴聚集在一起，并促进这些利益相关者之间的流动性和思想交流，来刺激这一研究领域的新努力。通过形成一个涵盖PAI的技术和方法开发以及临床前和临床应用的新的多学科研究社区，我们预计未来将有重大的合作机会和新的多学科研究建议，这将推动PAI领域在医疗保健系统中的应用。通过培训下一代PAI研究人员并为他们配备标准化工具，我们预计英国-PA的活动将渗透到全球PAI社区。主要影响将是更快地推进PAI的临床翻译。

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.