Carotid arteries are important channels delivering blood and oxygen to brain. Atherosclerosis plaque in carotid arterieshinders blood delivery, and plaque rupture causes stroke, leading to high morbidity and motility. Extensive preclinicaland clinical studies showed that atherosclerosis inflammation activities are highly related to plaque vulnerability. Thus,visualizing the inflammation of atherosclerosis plaques is important in atherosclerosis vulnerability assessment. In thisstudy, photoacoustic imaging modality was applied for carotid atherosclerosis inflammation identification of mouse invivo.Deficient apolipoprotein E (ApoE-/-) mice with high-fat diet and normal diet for 16 weeks were employed asatherosclerosis models and control models, respectively. Photoacoustic molecular probes with optical absorption at nearinfraredwavelength and specifically target cluster of differentiation 36 (CD36) were employed to mark inflammationcells in carotid atherosclerosis plaques of mouse in vivo. Noninvasive imaging of atherosclerosis inflammation cellsmarked by molecular probes was performed by point-to-point scanning with a custom-built acoustic-resolutionphotoacoustic imaging system. Considering low scattering of near-infrared light in tissues and mature commercializationof laser, excitation wavelength in this research is chosen at 1064 nm. Carotid arteries with and without atherosclerosisplaques have been noninvasively imaged and distinguished. Furthermore, carotid atherosclerosis with differentinflammation severity has been analyzed by photoacoustic imaging and immunohistochemistry staining. Photoacousticsignal from atherosclerosis arteries showed high relativity with inflammation severity defined by immunohistochemistrystaining, evidencing the reliability of the novel imaging technology in atherosclerosis inflammation identification. Thisstudy paves the way for photoacoustic imaging technology to atherosclerosis inflammation identification, severityquantification and even further atherosclerosis therapy.
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