Photoacoustic imaging of gastric cancer in vitro based on water-soluble nanoscale gold rods

With the development of diagnostic and therapeutic options in gastric cancer, the incidence of gastric cancer is decreasing over the past two decades. However, it is still necessary to improve the early diagnosis technology of gastric cancer to reduce the mortality of gastric cancer. Photoacoustic imaging is a rapidly developing diagnostic modality of cancer which is based on optical excitation and ultrasonic detection. In this paper, photoacoustic imaging is proposed as a visual tool to compound structural and location information for early stage gastric cancer detection by using nanoscale gold rods. The experimental results showed that the nanoscale gold rods can increase penetration depth of tumor in addition to that diagnosing the early gastric cancer with no obvious symptoms.