State-of-the-Art Preclinical Photoacoustic Imaging in Oncology: Recent Advances in Cancer Theranostics

Figure 1

Physical principles of cancer PAI. Short pulsed laser light is used to irradiate the tumor area, inducing ultrasonic waves from endogenous or exogenous photoabsorbers on the basis of thermoelastic expansion. An US transducer is used to detect the PA signal. Contrast obtained from PAI can be useful in characterization and monitoring of tumors (adapted with permission from Valluru and Willmann [2], CC BY-NC-ND license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/).