Journal
PHYSICS IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY
Volume 54, Issue 3, Pages 641-650Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/54/3/011
Keywords
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01CA112398]
- National Cancer Institute
- Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program [W81XWH-07-1-0629]
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Microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography (MI-TAT) is an imaging technique that exploits dielectric contrast at microwave frequencies while creating images with ultrasound resolution. We propose the use of microbubbles as a dielectric contrast agent for enhancing the sensitivity of MI-TAT for breast cancer detection. As an initial investigation of this concept, we experimentally studied the extent to which the microwave-induced thermoacoustic response of a dielectric target is modified by the presence of air-filled glass microbubbles. We created mixtures of ethylene glycol with varying weight percentages of microbubbles and characterized both their microwave properties (0.5-6 GHz) and thermoacoustic response when irradiated with microwave energy at 3 GHz. Our data show that the microbubbles considerably lowered the relative permittivity, electrical conductivity and thermoacoustic response of the ethylene glycol mixtures. We hypothesize that the interstitial infusion of microbubbles to a tumor site will similarly create a smaller thermoacoustic response compared to the pre-contrast-agent response, thereby enhancing sensitivity through the use of differential imaging techniques.
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