Quantifying Imaging Agent Binding and Dissociation in 3-D Cancer Spheroid Tissue Culture Using Paired-Agent Principles.

Binding kinetics play an important role in cancer diagnosis and therapeutics. However, current methods of quantifying binding kinetics fail to consider the three-dimensional environment that drugs and imaging agents experience in biological tissue. In response, a methodology to assay agent binding and dissociation in 3-D tissue culture was developed using paired-agent molecular imaging principles.

Improved intraoperative identification of close margins in oral squamous cell carcinoma resections using a dual aperture fluorescence ratio approach: first in-human results.

Significance: Surgical excision is the main treatment for solid tumors in oral squamous cell carcinomas, where wide local excision (achieving a healthy tissue margin of around the excised tumor) is the goal as it results in reduced local recurrence rates and improved overall survival.

Aim: No clinical methods are available to assess the complete surgical margin intraoperatively while the patient is still on the operating table; and while recent intraoperative back-bench fluorescence-guided surgery approaches have shown promise for detecting "positive" inadequate margins (), they have had limited success in the detection of "close" inadequate margins (1 to 5 mm). Here, a dual aperture fluorescence ratio (dAFR) approach was evaluated as a means of improving detection of close margins.

A cadaveric breast cancer tissue phantom for phase-contrast X-ray imaging applications.

Background: As mammography X-ray imaging technologies advance and provide elevated contrast in soft tissues, a need has developed for reliable imaging phantoms for use in system design and component calibration. In advanced imaging modalities such as refraction-based methods, it is critical that developed phantoms capture the biological details seen in clinical precancerous and cancerous cases while minimizing artifacts that may be caused due to phantom production. This work presents the fabrication of a breast tissue imaging phantom from cadaveric breast tissue suitable for use in both transmission and refraction-enhanced imaging systems.

Special Section Guest Editorial: Hard X-Ray Tomography with Micrometer Resolution.

JMI guest editors introduce articles collected in the JMI Special Section on Hard X-Ray Tomography with Micrometer Resolution, a snapshot of this important niche area featured by hard x-ray tomography at the micrometer level.

Model-based system matrix for iterative reconstruction in sub-diffuse angular-domain fluorescence optical projection tomography.

This work concerns a fluorescence optical projection tomography system for low scattering tissue, like lymph nodes, with angular-domain rejection of highly scattered photons. In this regime, filtered backprojection (FBP) image reconstruction has been shown to provide reasonable quality images, yet here a comparison of image quality between images obtained by FBP and iterative image reconstruction with a Monte Carlo generated system matrix, demonstrate measurable improvements with the iterative method. Through simulated and experimental phantoms, iterative algorithms consistently outperformed FBP in terms of contrast and spatial resolution.