Imaging molecular signatures for clinical detection of scleroderma in the hand by multispectral photoacoustic elastic tomography

Abstract

Scleroderma (SD) is a rare autoimmune disease, which is divided into 2 categories: the localized SD and systemic SD. The localized SD mainly causes skin thickening of the fingers, whereas the systemic SD can further affect the blood vessels and internal organs. In this pilot study, the multispectral photoacoustic elastic tomography (PAET) imaging technique was used to recover the quantitative physiological and elastic properties of biological tissues for the diagnosis of SD. Three healthy subjects and 3 SD patients were recruited and clinically examined by a rheumatologist, and then their hand/fingers were scanned by both magnetic resonance imaging and our home-made photoacoustic imaging system. Physiological parameters including oxygen saturation (S O ), deoxy-hemoglobin (Hb) and oxy-hemoglobin (HbO ) concentrations and mechanical properties such as bulk elastic modulus images were reconstructed using the developed PAET reconstruction method. Our imaging results demonstrated that the physiological and elastic parameters exhibit striking differences between the SD and normal fingers, indicating that these biomarkers can serve as molecular signatures for early detection of SD. These quantitative physiological properties and bulk modulus may also pave a new path for improved understanding the pathological mechanism of SD.

Multispectral optoacoustic tomography of systemic sclerosis

“…Our results show reduced values of haemoglobin in subcutaneous finger tissue of patients with SSc compared to healthy volunteers. This observation is consistent with first experimental findings in SSc and generally in accordance with the current concept of microvascular dysfunction and subsequent development of DU . Second, we observed significantly reduced values of haemoglobin in patients with a progressive disease burden compared to SSc patients with a stable disease activity or healthy volunteers.…”

“…Besides its application in preclinical models of disease , MSOT has recently proven to be a promising tool in first clinical applications . Recent studies have shown the general capability of MSOT for dedicated vascular imaging .…”

“…Different clinical applications of optoacoustic imaging have been reported for vascular imaging , oncology or inflammatory bowel diseases . Recently, first approaches of photoacoustic devices for whole finger tissue imaging have been described . Implementation of a handheld hybrid MSOT/ultrasound (US) enables accurate co‐localization of US images and optoacoustic contrast, adding biological information to US derived morphology .…”

Towards Personalized Medicine: Photoacoustic Imaging of Glutathione Enables Companion Diagnosis and Targeted Treatment of Lung Cancer

“…4 Label-free PA imaging has already been employed clinically for the detection of breast cancer, 5 thyroid cancer, 6 inflammatory arthritis, 7 and scleroderma. 8 Recently, our group and others have expanded the scope of PA imaging through the development of acoustogenic ABS probes. 9,10 Select examples include imaging agents for the detection of metal ion dysregulation, [11][12][13][14] hypoxia, [15][16][17][18] proteases, 19,20 and signaling molecules (e.g., nitric oxide 21,22 and hydrogen sulfide 23 ).…”

Photoacoustic assessment of hemodynamic changes in foot vessels

“…It can afford high resolution images in deep tissue based on optical absorption. PAT has shown its ability in breast cancer [21][22][23], thyroid cancer [24,25], vascular examination [4,[26][27][28][29], inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis [30][31][32], oral cancer [33][34][35], bone pathology [36] and dermatology [37][38][39] in human studies. PAT of vasculature can be achieved because hemoglobin is concentrated in blood vessels with strong optical absorption.…”