Grant: Meetings, Planning & Dissemination Grant: Cancer Research

We are studying methods to develop and enhance the use of ultrasound techniques to improve cancer treatment. We are proposing an international symposium that will expand and build on our previous track record of developing quantitative ultrasound methods to detect, quantify and track the effects of cancer therapies on cell death. Topics to be included will span ultrasound, new optical and photo-acoustic methods and new cell death detecting MRI methods from basic fundamental science to translational efforts underway clinically. The symposium will focus on quantitative imaging methods within clinical ranges of ultrasound frequencies, new opto-acoustic and optical methods, and MRI methods, and how these may be used to quantifying many forms of cell death. Experts will also lecture on validating ultrasound and optical imaging methods using correlative analysis of three-dimensional histopathology and specialized MRI tumour imaging methods as gold standard references with human tumour samples. The symposium will also focus on incorporating results from the development and monitoring of new therapies where ultrasound, as a new anti-vascular agent, can enhance chemotherapy and radiation cancer treatments. The ultimate goal of this symposium is to be able to expand the role of ultrasound and optical methods clinically leading to major and expanded roles in cancer therapy. We anticipate that these imaging methods will be a potentially cost-effective tool which can be used by clinicians in the near future to guide changes in ineffective therapy to make treatments effective leading to personalized medicine.