Evaluation Of Detection Of HCC In Vivo Using The Endoscopic Cerenkov Luminescence Imaging System

In recent years, Cerenkov luminescence imaging(CLI) rises rapidly in the field of molecular imaging, which attracts a lot of attention. The mechanism of CLI is that the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium. It completes the process of imaging through the optical device. Unlike the positron emitting computed tomography(PET), CLI has many advantages, such as high throughput, low costs and use of non-toxic radiopharmaceuticals. It has a significant impact on the basic research, clinical diagnosis and treatment. However, CLI has its own defects, because its weaker intensity and great absorption in biological tissues and poor ability of penetration, these factors limit wide biomedical applications. In order to solve the problem, a novel high-sensitivity endoscopic Cerenkov luminescence imaging(ECLI) system was developed in this study. It combined the endoscopic technology and optical imaging to improve the sensitivity of imaging system through reducing the loss of Cerenkov photons in space.There are two parts of work to build the endoscopic Cerenkov luminescence imaging system: the design of hardware and software related mission. The part of hardware mainly includes imaging module, cooled system module, auxiliary platform module and module. Cerenkov images acquisitions are compete through the collaborative operation between modules. About the program, it helps parameters adjustment, images fusion and images denoise. Combining the hardware and program provides a complete set of high-sensitivity optical imaging system. In addition, a series of biological experiments are conducted in order to verify the performance of the imaging system. Subcutaneous xenograft models and orthotopic xenograft models of human hepatocelluar carcinoma(HCC) cells are built in the experiments using nude mice with genetic defects. The imaging system detected the subcutaneous HCC successfully and guided the surgery of tumor resection through intraoperative imaging. Experimental results had consistency with traditional Cerenkov luminescent images, which demonstrated the robustness of ECLI system. Detection of orthotopic HCC in vivo was a breakthrough in deep tissue imaging. In this study the traditional Cerenkov imaging was used as control group. The results were encouraging, traditional Cerenkov imaging did not detect any meaningful information about orthotopic HCC. Instead, the ECLI system was successful to detect and resect the orthotopic HCC, which has great practical significance and clinical application.