Photoacoustic Imaging (PAI) has emerged as a powerful imaging technique that combines advantages of optical absorption contrast with the ability to penetrate deep into biological tissues using ultrasound waves. Exogenous chromophores, including light-absorbing nanoparticles (NPs), can significantly enhance the photoacoustic response and provide photoacoustic contrast for various regions in organism. We recently introduced laser-synthesized TiN NPs as a promising alternative plasmonic nanomaterial, having exceptionally high optical absorption in the window of biological tissue transparency. In this study, we continue our evaluation of laser-synthesized TiN NPs as a contrast agent for PAI by comparative studying of optical and photoacoustic response of tissue-mimicking phantoms containing TiN NPs. We demonstrated that laser-synthesized TiN NPs preserve their superior photoacoustic performance in the conditions of tissue-like media. Our results confirm high potential of TiN NPs to serve as an effective exogenous contrast agent for PAI.
Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a rapidly growing imaging modality, which combines high contrast of optical absorption with deep penetration depth of ultrasound. When combined with endogenous contrast agents based on light-absorbing nanoparticles (NPs), PAI can visualize various biological processes and tissues. Here, we describe a simple experimental setup based on a tissue-mimicking phantom with flexible optical properties for studying photoacoustic (PA) response of NPs. Our approach is based on a polyacrylamide gel phantom with independently variable optical absorption and scattering. The phantom allows one to model and study PA response of contrast agents with diverse spatial distributions and concentrations. To demonstrate high potential of the developed experimental setup, we prepared a phantom with optical properties matching human prostate tissue and performed a PAI of laser-synthesized titanium nitride (TiN) NPs, distributed in a disk-shaped area, located 10 mm under the phantom surface. We believe that our approach will contribute the successful development of clinical PAI with NPs-based contrast agents.
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