The potential of photoacoustic imaging in radiation oncology
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Radiotherapy is recognized globally as a mainstay of treatment in most solid tumors and is essential in both curative and palliative settings. Ionizing radiation is frequently combined with surgery, either preoperatively or postoperatively, and with systemic chemotherapy. Recent advances in imaging have enabled precise targeting of solid lesions yet substantial intratumoral heterogeneity means that treatment planning and monitoring remains a clinical challenge as therapy response can take weeks to manifest on conventional imaging and early indications of progression can be misleading. Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is an emerging modality for molecular imaging of cancer, enabling non-invasive assessment of endogenous tissue chromophores with optical contrast at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. Preclinical studies in mouse models have shown that PAI could be used to assess response to radiotherapy and chemoradiotherapy based on changes in the tumor vascular architecture and blood oxygen saturation, which are closely linked to tumor hypoxia. Given the strong relationship between hypoxia and radio-resistance, PAI assessment of the tumor microenvironment has the potential to be applied longitudinally during radiotherapy to detect resistance at much earlier time-points than currently achieved by size measurements and tailor treatments based on tumor oxygen availability and vascular heterogeneity. Here, we review the current state-of-the-art in PAI in the context of radiotherapy research. Based on these studies, we identify promising applications of PAI in radiation oncology and discuss the future potential and outstanding challenges in the development of translational PAI biomarkers of early response to radiotherapy.
Date Issued
2022-03-03
Date Acceptance
2022-02-07
Citation
Frontiers in Oncology, 2022, 12
ISSN
2234-943X
Publisher
Frontiers Media S.A.
Journal / Book Title
Frontiers in Oncology
Volume
12
Copyright Statement
© 2022 Lefebvre, Brown, Hacker, Else, Oraiopoulou, Tomaszewski, Jena and Bohndiek. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35311156
Subjects
image guidance
photoacoustic (optoacoustic) imaging
quantitative imaging biomarker
radiation oncology
radiotherapy
translational research
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Switzerland
Article Number
803777
Date Publish Online
2022-03-03