The role of ultrasound in molecular imaging

Abstract

Ultrasound has received less attention than other imaging modalities for molecular imaging, but has a number of potential advantages. It is cheap, widely available and portable. Using Doppler methods, flow information can be obtained easily and non-invasively. It is arguably the most physiological modality, able to image structure and function with less sedation than other modalities. This means that function is minimally disturbed, and multiple repeat studies or the effect of interventions can easily be assessed. High frame rates of over 200 frames a second are achievable on current commercial systems, allowing for convenient cardiac studies in small animals. It can be used to guide interventional or invasive studies, such as needle placement. Ultrasound is also unique in being both an imaging and therapeutic tool and its value in gene therapy has received much recent interest. Ultrasound biomicroscopy has been used for in utero imaging and can guide injection of virus and cells. Ultrahigh frequency ultrasound can be used to determine cell mechanical properties. The development of microbubble contrast agents has opened many new opportunities, including new functional imaging methods, the ability to image capillary flow and the possibility of molecular targeting using labelled microbubbles.

Synthetic micro/nanomotors in drug delivery

“…66,67 Recent efforts by the teams of Mallouk's group 29,68 and our team 30,31 have illustrated the use of possibility of using ultrasound for propelling gold-nanowire and tubular motors in biologically relevant environments.…”

Mapping the Micromechanical Properties of Cryo-sectioned Aortic Tissue with Scanning Acoustic Microscopy

“…Acoustic attenuation, which was not presented in this paper, is determined by absorption of sound within the tissue, and is therefore more closely related to tissue viscosity [22].…”

Episcopic 3D Imaging Methods: Tools for Researching Gene Function

“…Thus the last decades saw the development of a vast number of methods for creating 3D information of cell, tissue, and organ morphology, 3D information of gene expression and gene product patterns, or both. Examples for techniques capable of analyzing small specimens, such as tissue samples or embryos are: in vivo microscopy [7][8][9][10], microcomputed tomography ( CT) [11][12][13], micro-magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) [9,[14][15][16][17][18], ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) [19][20][21], optical projection tomography (OPT) [22,23], confocal microscopy [24][25][26][27][28], atomic force microscopy [29][30][31], 3D electron tomography [32,33], histological or macroscopic section based 3D reconstruction methods [34][35][36][37][38], and 3D episcopic imaging methods (see below). This paper does not compare all the different methods for volume data generation and gene expression analysis.…”