Use of Multispectral Optoacoustic Tomography to Diagnose Vascular Malformations

Abstract

IMPORTANCE Differential diagnosis of congenital vascular anomalies is challenging, and misdiagnosis is frequent. Vascular malformations are considered one of the most difficult vascular diseases to treat. A new imaging approach that visualizes anatomical features and quantitatively assesses molecular biomarkers noninvasively would aid diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response of vascular malformations.OBJECTIVE To evaluate multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) for noninvasive assessment of molecular biomarkers for diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of vascular malformations. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSThis pilot study examined 6 patients with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) and 6 patients with venous malformation (VM) diagnosed according to the classification system of the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies. All patients underwent clinical hybrid MSOT/ultrasonographic (US) imaging before and after treatment at an interdisciplinary vascular malformations clinic by trained MSOT and US examiners. Examiners were blinded to the patient history and stage of disease.

Bedside 3D Visualization of Lymphatic Vessels with a Handheld Multispectral Optoacoustic Tomography Device

“…In addition, the handheld MSOT device in the present work can be used to apply light at several wavelengths to optimally unmix tissue and injected chromophores, while other devices are restricted to two wavelengths [2,9]. While MSOT with a handheld scanner was found suitable for clinical imaging of major blood vessels and microvasculature in healthy persons [10] and in patients with vascular malformations [11], its use to visualize lymphatic vessels in patients with lymphedema has never been described.…”

“…Our pilot study describes the first results of lymphatic vessel visualization by handheld 3D multispectral optoacoustic tomography. While MSOT has been applied in cancer, vascular and inflammatory imaging [4,7,11,18], its use in other fields is still emerging [19]. In addition, MSOT has been shown to provide investigator-independent, consistent and reproducible functional soft tissue characterization [20].…”

Shedding light on pediatric diseases: multispectral optoacoustic tomography at the doorway to clinical applications

“…Successful studies were performed for mapping human feet blood vessels [18] as well as carotid arteries [24]. The ability to resolve vessels as small as 100 μm in diameter and within 1-cm depth could also aid to diagnose vascular malformations [16].…”

A Sparse Deep Learning Approach for Automatic Segmentation of Human Vasculature in Multispectral Optoacoustic Tomography

“…The abundant presence of hemoglobin in the blood renders multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) an ideal technique for imaging vasculature [1][2][3]. By illuminating tissue at multiple different light wavelengths at the near infrared range (~680-980 nm), MSOT is capable of resolving several tissue chromophores, in particular oxy-(HbO 2 ) and deoxy-hemoglobin (Hb), with a wide range of clinical applications, such as Crohn's disease, systemic sclerosis, breast cancer, brown adipose tissue imaging and thyroid disease [4][5][6][7][8].…”