Mark Anastasio
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Breast tumors that grow aggressively use oxygen quickly, so their blood is often less oxygenated than blood in healthy tissue. Optoacoustic tomography (OAT), also called photoacoustic computed tomography, could image this difference without radiation.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
optoacoustic tomography
photoacoustic computed tomography
photoacoustic imaging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Develop multi-physics simulation tools that model light transport and sound detection to generate realistic 3D breast optoacoustic tomography (OAT) measurement data from numerical breast phantoms.
- Systematically develop and refine quantitative OAT image reconstruction methods that estimate the distribution of blood oxygen saturation in tumors and surrounding breast tissue.
- Conduct physical imaging experiments to validate the computational models used to simulate breast OAT data.
- Conduct virtual imaging trials, simulated imaging studies, to compare OAT hardware and reconstruction designs and identify optimal systems based on diagnostic task performance.
More about the research
It shines light into tissue; hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in blood, absorbs the light and gives off sound waves, which are recorded to form an image. No OAT method is yet accurate enough for routine clinical breast imaging. Many competing designs exist, and testing all of them in patients would be too slow, costly and ethically difficult.
Why it matters
Doctors need safe, accurate ways to diagnose and manage breast cancer. OAT could map tumor blood vessels and oxygen levels without ionizing radiation. Simulation tools that let researchers test and optimize OAT systems quickly and cheaply could speed the development of clinically useful 3D breast OAT scanners. Breast cancer patients could benefit from better diagnosis and monitoring.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Haichong Zhang
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop multiparametric photoacoustic imaging that simultaneously quantifies a PSMA-targeted contrast agent and blood oxygen saturation, to identify abnormal prostate tissue and gauge cancer aggressiveness.
Souvik Roy
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Mathematics & Statistics
Develop a gradient-free Nash game computational scheme that fills in missing photoacoustic measurements and estimates the unknown sound speed and optical energy density in tissue.
Wei Zhao
Stony Brook University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Design, optimize and fabricate a prototype dual-layer flat-panel detector that records two mammograms at different x-ray energies in a single exposure, giving perfectly aligned images free of patient-motion artifacts.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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