Linear-array-based photoacoustic tomography for label-free high throughput detection and quantification of circulating melanoma tumor cell clusters
Abstract
Circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters arise from multicellular grouping in the primary tumor and elevate the metastatic potential by 23 to 50 fold compared to single CTCs. High throughout detection and quantification of CTC clusters is critical for understanding the tumor metastasis process and improving cancer therapy. In this work, we report a linear-array-based photoacoustic tomography (LA-PAT) system capable of label-free high-throughput CTC cluster detection and quantification in vivo. LA-PAT detects CTC clusters and quantifies the number of cells in them based on the contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) of photoacoustic signals. The feasibility of LA-PAT was first demonstrated by imaging CTC clusters ex vivo. LA-PAT detected CTC clusters in the blood-filled microtubes and computed the number of cells in the clusters. The size distribution of the CTC clusters measured by LA-PAT agreed well with that obtained by optical microscopy. We demonstrated the ability of LA-PAT to detect and quantify CTC clusters in vivo by imaging injected CTC clusters in rat tail veins. LA-PAT detected CTC clusters immediately after injection as well as when they were circulating in the rat bloodstreams. Similarly, the numbers of cells in the clusters were computed based on the CNRs of the photoacoustic signals. The data showed that larger CTC clusters disappear faster than the smaller ones. The results prove the potential of LA-PAT as a promising tool for both preclinical tumor metastasis studies and clinical cancer therapy evaluation.
Additional Information
© 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). We thank Eric Zhang for his help in cell cluster preparation. We also thank Professor James Ballard for a close reading of this paper. This work was sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health grant Nos. DP1 EB016986 (NIH Director's Pioneer Award), R01 CA186567 (NIH Director's Transformative Research Award), and S10 RR026922, and US National Science Foundation IDBR award 1255930. L. V. Wang has a financial interest in Microphotoacoustics, Inc., which, however, did not support this work.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 80059
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170810-084927387
- NIH
- DP1 EB016986
- NIH
- R01 CA186567
- NIH
- S10 RR026922
- NSF
- 1255930
- Created
-
2017-08-10Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 10064