| This study aims to noninvasively localize and characterize myocardial infarction(MI)in vivo by using a hemispherical photoacoustic imaging(hPAI)system.MI remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide.For adequate treatment of patients,timely and accurate diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring is highly warranted.Ischemia was induced in Balb/c mice by ligation of the left anterior descending artery.The hPAI system equipped with 128 ultrasonic transducers spirally distributed on the surface and corresponding parallel data acquisition was applied to image the mouse heart.Our studies have shown that hPAI can delineate thoracic vessels and the morphology of the entire heart.Longitudinal hPAI images illustrated that the infarcted area expanded gradually along necrosis and fibrosis,which were quantitatively validated by triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining.After MI modeling,the PA signal intensity decreased by 399.1±56.3(p<0.001),which is a～2.5-fold decline compared to that of healthy cardiac tissue.The calculated size of the enlarged heart(10.4±6.0)mm2(p<0.001)represents a～18%increase compared to the size of a healthy heart.High-resolution hPAI enables deep imaging of cardiac necrosis and fibrosis as well as lesion differentiation.This approach is a complementary tool to conventional diagnosis modalities,permitting clear structural mapping and precise localization of cardiac pathology. |
