Ultrasonic (US) imager for enhanced resolution, contrast and fast patient screening via co-registration with photoacoustic-radar tomographic (PART) imaging of breast cancer

我们需要一个生物医学超声（US）成像仪作为我们实验室开发的独特的光声雷达断层成像（PART）成像仪的附件，并与之集成和共同配准（或共同成像）。PART成像仪在频域中工作，它使用电流调制半导体激光源和基于雷达（或声纳）原理的传感器相控阵检测。PART软件同时产生振幅和相位图像。提出的两种成像模式（PART - US）结合用于早期乳腺癌诊断的应用将在许多重要方面优于单独的PART成像和单独的US成像：1)传统超声是一种成熟的技术，共同配准可以极大地促进我们的新型PART成像模式集成到商业系统中，其中光声和超声激励源将使用相同的超声接收器阵列；2)超声通道可用于快速筛选和识别生物组织目标，从而为实时PART - US临床成像铺平道路；3)通过突出血液的存在（在血管生成肿瘤的情况下），在其他对比（可能令人困惑）的杂散信号中，共同注册的叠加图像可以表现出优越的特异性，这些杂散信号是由周围解剖结构的声散射体和边界反射单独获得的，因此可以更好地显示肿瘤形态和位置；4)利用本系统正在开发的双波长PART源，利用两个近红外波长图像的相对振幅强度来评估超声划定的肿瘤的血氧合程度，从而建立肿瘤的恶性/良性诊断标准。

A biomedical ultrasonic (US) imager is requested as an accessory to, and for integration and co-registration (or co-imaging) with, a unique photoacoustic-radar tomography (PART) imager developed in our laboratory. The PART imager operates in the frequency domain, it uses current-modulated semiconductor laser sources and a transducer phased array with detection based on radar (or sonar) principles. PART software produces simultaneous amplitude and phase images. The proposed combination of the two imaging modalities (PART - US) for early breast cancer diagnostic applications will be superior to PART imaging alone and to US imaging alone on many important counts: 1) Conventional ultrasound is a mature technology and co-registration can greatly facilitate the integration of our novel PART imaging modality into a commercial system, where photoacoustic and ultrasonic excitation sources will be using the same ultrasonic receiver array; 2) the ultrasound channel can be used for quick screening and identification of biological tissue targets therefore paving the way for real-time PART - US clinical imaging; 3) the co-registered superposition image can exhibit superior specificity by highlighting the presence of blood (in the case of angiogenetic tumors) for better visualization of tumor morphology and location among other contrasting - and possibly confusing- stray signals obtained by each modality alone due to acoustic scatterers and boundary reflections at the surrounding anatomy; 4) using a two-wavelength PART source under development in our system, the relative amplitude strengths of images at the two near-infrared wavelengths will be used to assess the degree of blood oxygenation of ultrasonically delineated tumors, thereby establishing a malignant / benign tumor diagnosis criterion.