Engineering new nanostructures for enhanced interaction with imaging radiation

纳米工程提供了一种独特的策略，以形成具有多种特性的新材料，这些特性可用于从光学和电子到生物技术和医学等领域。与纳米技术领域相关的一个基本兴奋点源于这样一个事实，即在纳米尺度上，物理性质和现象不再仅仅取决于结构的组成，而且还取决于它们的大小和形状。纳米技术的一个有前途的领域是医学成像，其中辐射，如光，超声波，射频波，磁场和X射线，用于成像患者的内部解剖结构以诊断疾病。* 使用成像辐射，在体内不同类型的组织之间实现对比，然后用于形成图像。然而，许多疾病病理具有低的天然对比度并且不能容易地检测。如果将被设计成与成像辐射强烈相互作用的纳米级材料注入患者的血流中，这些“造影剂”可以通过医学成像来追踪，以阐明更微妙的、以前无法检测到的疾病病理。今天，大多数造影剂是简单的纳米结构，其直接从现有的结构转化而来，以满足微电子/光子工业的需求。实际上，最成功的医学成像纳米结构可能来自于设计新材料，这些材料具有精确设计的特性，可以与患者已经使用的特定辐射相互作用。* Matsuura博士的研究计划旨在设计新的设计师纳米结构，不仅可用于检测疾病，还可通过医学成像辐射在体内激活，以改变尺寸，形状和组成。这种激活可用于非侵入性地递送药物或更好地表征局部疾病环境以评估治疗。研究开发和理解这些类型的纳米制剂如何与医学成像辐射相互作用，可以导致如何治疗患者疾病的新范例，以及开发新的医学成像或治疗工具，可以改善未来的患者健康。

Nanoengineering offers a unique strategy to form new materials with a combination of properties engineered for applications in fields ranging from optics and electronics to biotechnology and medicine. A fundamental excitement associated with the field of nanotechnology stems from the fact that at the nanoscale, physical properties and phenomena are no longer dependent only on the composition of the structure, but also on their size and shape. One promising area for nanotechnology is in medical imaging, where radiation, such as light, ultrasound, radiofrequency waves, magnetic fields, and x-rays, is used to image the internal anatomy of patients to diagnose disease. *** Using imaging radiation, contrast is achieved between different types of tissues in the body which is then used to form images. However, many disease pathologies have low native contrast and cannot be easily detected. If nanoscale materials that are engineered to strongly interact with imaging radiation are injected into the bloodstream of patients, these "contrast agents" can be tracked by medical imaging to elucidate more subtle, previously undetectable, disease pathologies. Today, most contrast agents are simple nanostructures that have been directly translated from existing structures created to meet the needs of the microelectronics/photonics industry. In reality, the most successful nanostructures for medical imaging will likely result from the design of novel materials with properties engineered precisely to interact with the particular radiation that is already in use in patients. *** Dr. Matsuura's research program aims to engineer new designer nanostructures that will not only be used to detect disease, but also can be activated in the body with medical imaging radiation to change size, shape, and composition. This activation can be used to non-invasively deliver drugs or better characterize a local disease environment to evaluate therapy. Research in developing and understanding how these types of nanoscale agents interact with medical imaging radiation can lead to new paradigms of how to treat diseases in patients, and to the development of new medical imaging or therapeutic tools that can improve patient health in the future.**