Photoacoustic tomography: a new imaging technology for inflammatory arthritis - as applied to tail spondylitis in rats.

摘要

Sirs, Early diagnosis and optimized therapy of inflammatory arthritis would be improved by increased availability of inexpensive and noninvasive yet powerful joint imaging technologies. We report on a new imaging technology called photoacoustic tomography (PAT), an emerging hybrid of optical and ultrasound imaging that is noninvasive, nonionizing, with high sensitivity, satisfactory imaging depth and good temporal and spatial resolution (1, 2). PAT provides a potentially powerful tool for both clinical and laboratory study of inflammatory arthritis by presenting both morphological and physiological characteristics of joint tissues. In this work, we used PAT to image a model of spondyloarthritis, namely HLA-B27/human beta2-microglobulin (B27/hbeta2m) transgenic rats (3). In particular, the tail spondylitis in this model provides a surrogate for human finger joints, considering their morphological similarity.