Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

We are studying methods to develop and enhance the use of photoacoustic and 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. Due to the similarity of the signals produced in photoacoustics, the symposium will focus on quantitative methods that can be adapted from the field of quantitative ultrasound tissue characterization to photoacoustics. We will also cover other imaging modalities that I use for treatment monitoring, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Topics to be included will span from basic fundamental biophysics and imaging science to translational efforts underway clinically. The symposium will focus on quantitative imaging methods within clinical ranges of ultrasound and photoacoustic frequencies and how these may be used to quantify tumor response to treatment - with a focus on detection of cell death using ultrasound and vascular response using photoacoustics. Experts will also lecture on validating ultrasound and photoacoustic 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 and microbubbles are used as a new anti-vascular agent can enhance chemotherapy and radiation treatments cancer. The ultimate goal of this symposium is be able to expand the role of ultrasound and photoacoustic 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 in the new year of personalized medicine.