Non-contact 3D photoacoustic/ultrasonic imaging for detecting the early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients

被诊断患有大的或侵袭性乳腺癌的妇女被建议在手术前接受治疗以缩小肿瘤。治疗通常涉及细胞毒性静脉化疗。并不是所有的女性对药物都有同样的反应。大约75%的妇女对药物反应良好，肿瘤缩小，因此手术成为一种选择。在剩下的25%的妇女中，药物几乎没有效果，在这种情况下，乳房切除术或姑息治疗是唯一剩下的选择。最近，研究人员发现，早在药物治疗后一天，乳腺肿瘤内和周围的富氧血液水平增加，预示着肿瘤缩小。然而，研究人员使用的成像方法需要很长时间才能完成，并且无法精确定位乳房内部的变化。在我们的工作中，我们将使用非接触式3D光声/超声断层扫描技术快速准确地成像乳腺内富氧血的分布。我们预测，非接触式3D光声/超声断层扫描将在单剂量化疗后提供肿瘤内部和周围富氧血液的详细视图，以识别对药物反应良好的妇女和那些不这样做的妇女。如果该项目成功，那么医生可以在治疗开始后一天使用非接触式3D光声/超声断层扫描来预测化疗敏感性，而不是像现在这样经过几个周期或几个月。对于那些非接触式3D光声/超声断层扫描结果预测他们对当前治疗没有反应的女性，可以选择二线化疗方案或替代治疗方案，如放射治疗，以缩小肿瘤，而不是让它们继续生长。

Women who have been diagnosed with large or aggressive breast cancers are advised to undergo treatment to shrink thetumour prior to surgery. Treatment usually involves cytotoxic intravenous chemotherapy. Not all women respond to the drugsequally. About 75% of women respond well to the drugs, and tumours are reduced in size so that surgery becomes anoption. In the remaining 25% of women, the drugs have little or no effect in which case mastectomy or palliation are the onlyremaining options. Recently, researchers have discovered that increased levels of oxygen-rich blood in and around breasttumours as early as one day after drug treatment are predictive of tumours that shrink. However, the imaging method usedby the researchers took a long time to perform and could not precisely locate the changes inside the breast. In our work, wewill use non-contact 3D photoacoustic/ultrasonic tomography to quickly and accurately image the distribution of oxygen-richblood inside the breast. We predict that non-contact 3D photoacoustic/ultrasonic tomography will provide a detailed view ofthe oxygen-rich blood inside and around tumours after a single dose of chemotherapy to identify women who respond well tothe drugs and those who do not. If the project is successful, then non-contact 3D photoacoustic/ultrasonic tomography couldbe used by doctors to predict chemotherapy sensitivity as soon as one day after treatment starts, not after several cycles ormonths, as is now the case. For women whose non-contact 3D photoacoustic/ultrasonic tomographic results predict thatthey will not respond to the current treatment, second line chemotherapy regimens or alternative treatment options such asradiation could be selected to shrink the tumours rather than allow them to continue to grow.