This animation video explains how the photoacoustic effect is used for biomedical imaging in preclinical and clinical settings. Contact us for more information and visit our website: www.ithera-medical.com/
Great optoacoustic images! I wonder when we see your optoacoustic devices in real clinical practice, rather then in preclinical research.
4 года назад
As you probably know, iThera's systems have already shown clinical value across a wide range of applications, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), breast cancer and neuromuscular disease. Study results have been published in prestigious clinical journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, Radiology and Science Translational Medicine. The MSOT Acuity has received CE mark as a medical device in 2019. Later this year, we are starting a multi-center trial in IBD where we hope to establish a first application for clinical practice. Keep your fingers crossed!
Doesn't the resultant bandwidth limited acoustic emissions suggest an underlying resonance factor? If so; isn't it probable that pulsing the laser at that same acoustic resonant frequency at a short duty cycle (at a higher intensity of course) would be destructive to the absorbent tissue (cancer for example)? So there could be not only diagnostic applications but treatment applications as well. Oh! And if your worried about financing this possibility, seems to me there is also a possibility of weaponizing the process. Just thinking out loud.
4 года назад
Thank you for the interesting thought - and apologies for the late reply on our side. In fact the photoacoustic emissions are only band limited (in form of a low-pass) by the length of the excitation pulse. There is no resonance effect (which would imply a non-linearity of response with increased excitation energy), the emission depends linearly on the amount of absorbed energy. As a result, higher duty cycle, longer pulse length or increased pulse energy would equivalently lead to increased tissue heating and beyond the respective damage threshold, tissue degeneration. On the regulatory side this is limited by exposure limits in biomedical applications, as well as significant cost of higher duty cycle lasers. Further, such pulsed lasers would always be less effective with respect to tissue destruction than equivalent continuous wave lasers, since there is no relaxation = cooling of tissue in-between pulses.
