Photoacoustic micro-imaging of focused ultrasound induced blood-brain-barrier opening in a rat model

Po Hsun Wang*, Po Hung Hsu, Hao Li Liu, Churng Ren Chris Wang, Meng Lin Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Blood brain barrier (BBB) prevents most of the drug from transmitting into the brain tissue and decreases the treatment performance for brain disease. One of the methods to overcome the difficulty of drug delivery is to locally increase the permeability of BBB with high-intensity focused ultrasound. In this study, we have investigated the feasibility of photoacoustic microscopy of focused-ultrasound induced BBB opening in a rat model in vivo with gold nanorods (AuNRs) as a contrast agent. This study takes advantage of the strong near-infrared absorption of AuNRs and their extravasation tendency from BBB opening foci due to their nano-scale size. Before the experiments, craniotomy was performed on rats to provide a path for focused ultrasound beam. Localized BBB opening at the depth of about 3 mm from left cortex of rat brains was achieved by delivering 1.5 MHz focused ultrasound energy into brain tissue in the presence of microbubbles. PEGylated AuNRs with a peak optical absorption at ~800 nm were then intravenously administered. Pre-scan prior to BBB disruption and AuNR injection was taken to mark the signal background. After injection, the distribution of AuNRs in rat brains was monitored up to 2 hours. Experimental results show that imaging AuNRs reveals BBB disruption area in left brains while there are no changes observed in the right brains. From our results, photoacoustic imaging plus AuNRs shows the promise as a novel monitoring strategy in identifying the location and variation of focused-ultrasound BBB-opening in a rat model.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPhotons Plus Ultrasound
Subtitle of host publicationImaging and Sensing 2010
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
EventPhotons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2010 - San Francisco, CA, United States
Duration: 24 01 201026 01 2010

Publication series

NameProgress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
Volume7564
ISSN (Print)1605-7422

Conference

ConferencePhotons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2010
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Francisco, CA
Period24/01/1026/01/10

Keywords

  • Blood brain barrier
  • Gold nanorod
  • High-intensity focused ultrasound
  • Photoacoustic microscopy

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