Phantom studies with gold nanorods as contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging: novel and old approaches

Cinzia Avigo; Nicole Di Lascio; Paolo Armanetti; Francesco Stea; Lucia Cavigli; Fulvio Ratto; Roberto Pini; Sandro Meucci; Marco Cecchini; Claudia Kusmic; Francesco Faita; Luca Menichetti

doi:10.1117/12.2077942

11 March 2015 Phantom studies with gold nanorods as contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging: novel and old approaches

Cinzia Avigo, Nicole Di Lascio, Paolo Armanetti, Francesco Stea, Lucia Cavigli, Fulvio Ratto, Roberto Pini, Sandro Meucci, Marco Cecchini, Claudia Kusmic, Francesco Faita, Luca Menichetti

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9323, Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2015; 93234B (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2077942
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2015, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Photoacoustic imaging is emerging as a bioimaging technique. The development of contrast agents extend the potential towards novel application. The design of stable phantoms is needed to achieve a semi-quantitative evaluation of the performance of contrast agents.

The aim of this study was to investigate the PA signal generated from gold nanorods (GNRs) loaded in custom made phantoms. VevoLAZR (VisualSonics Inc., Toronto) was used with custom made agar phantom, with 5 parallel polyethylene tubes (with 0.58mm internal and 0.99mm external diameter), and a PDMS phantom, with six parallel channels with sizes from 50 μm to 500 μm, loaded with two different types of GNRs: PEGGNRs (53nm length and 11nm axial diameter, plasmon resonance at 840nm, 87nM (15mM Au equivalent)); and gold nanorods (NPZ) coated in a dense layer of hydrophilic polymers by Nanopartz Inc., Loveland, CO (41nm length and 10nm axial diameter, plasmon resonance at 808nm, 83 nM (14mM Au equivalent)).

The absorption spectra acquired with the PA system and the spectrophotometer were compared. The reproducibility and stability of the PA signal were evaluated at different dilutions. The dynamic variation of the PA signal was evaluated as function of the number of the GNRs. The SNR and the contrast were measured across the range of concentrations studied. The custom made agar phantom demonstrated suitable for the characterization of PA contrast agents such as PEG-GNRs and NPZ. The PDMS phantom is promising in the field of photoacoustics, therefore future works will conducted exploiting its precise and controlled geometry.

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Cinzia Avigo, Nicole Di Lascio, Paolo Armanetti, Francesco Stea, Lucia Cavigli, Fulvio Ratto, Roberto Pini, Sandro Meucci, Marco Cecchini, Claudia Kusmic, Francesco Faita, and Luca Menichetti "Phantom studies with gold nanorods as contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging: novel and old approaches", Proc. SPIE 9323, Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2015, 93234B (11 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2077942

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