Photoacoustic 3D Tomographic-Imaging System Developed for Cancer Research

The system is used for simple, fast, noninvasive quantification of tumor vasculature and other physiologic parameters for preclinical research.

The Nexus 128, developed by Endra Life Sciences, makes in vivo quantification of tumor vasculature possible without the need for contrast agents and helps preclinical researchers gain deeper insight into areas such as how drugs treat disease and cancer progression, without ionizing radiation or complicated equipment.

Endra Life Sciences was founded by Enlight Biosciences (Boston MA, USA), a funding syndicate of six of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies focused on commercializing transformational technologies. "Photoacoustic imaging combines ultrasound with the rich contrast of optical imaging, based on the same principles that give cells, organs, and tissues their unique colors,” said Michael Thornton, Endra's president and chief operating officer. "It provides high spatial resolution at depth far exceeding that of conventional optical imaging techniques such as fluorescence and bioluminescence. We are excited to make this technology widely available to cancer biology researchers for the first time.”

"Mouse models of cancer are used extensively to study tumor development and the effects of new therapies, but until now the tools to measure this effect have had depth limitations,” said Dr. Rakesh Jain, director, Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA), and Enlight Biosciences advisor. "The ability to track abnormal vessel growth and normalization in vivo with high resolution throughout a tumor mass during therapeutic intervention is a powerful new capability that will be widely used in cancer research.”

The name Nexus 128 represents the convergence of light and sound in a powerful new imaging approach. It employs a detector array consisting of 128 individual acoustic receiver elements arranged in a patented geometry. The system generates multispectral, quantitative, three-dimensional (3D) images of tumor vasculature and hemoglobin concentration in under two minutes, and completes volumetric anatomic scans in as little as 12 seconds. "For the past several years, our research group has developed quantitative photoacoustic spectroscopy imaging techniques and applied them to mouse models of cancer,” said Dr. Keith Stantz, faculty member of Purdue University. "We have been using Endra's photoacoustic tomography prototype system regularly for the past year. The simplified animal handling and high throughput allow us to image entire study groups within a couple of hours.”

Endra Life Sciences launched the product at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 101st annual meeting 2010 in Washington, DC, USA, April 17-21, 2010. The Nexus 128 system was featured in a poster by Dr. Stantz and his colleagues from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN, USA).

Short pulses of light absorbed deep within tissue create sound waves that are detected by ultrasound receivers to create an image. This noninvasive approach provides high contrast imaging at depths, and spatial resolution far exceeding existing optical techniques. The photoacoustic effect, a precursor to photoacoustic imaging, revealed that energy from sunlight could be transformed into a sound wave. Recent advances in pulsed laser sources, ultrasound devices, and image reconstruction algorithms have enabled the photoacoustic effect to be applied to biologic imaging. Endra's Nexus 128 is the first commercial photoacoustic-imaging device designed specifically for high throughput, quantitative, in vivo small animal imaging.

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