Seeing melanoma | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Wang with the photoacoustic imaging system built in his lab. The photoacoustic technique had been used in the 1980s to test non-biological materials for cracks, but in 2003, Wang and his colleagues published startling photoacoustic images of a rat brain, taken through the skin and skull, that showed how the brain responded when the rat’s whiskers were touched. Today, more papers are published about photoacoustic imaging than any other type of optical imaging, Wang says.

Seeing melanoma
A new imaging technique creates detailed 3-dimensional images of the deadliest form of skin cancer
August 10, 2010
By Diana Lutz and Gwen Ericson

Melanoma is one of the less common types of skin cancer, but it accounts for the majority of the skin cancer deaths (about 75 percent).

The five-year survival rate for early stage melanoma is very high (98 percent), but the rate drops precipitously if the cancer is detected late or there is recurrence.

So a great deal rides on the accuracy of the initial surgery, where the goal is to remove as little tissue as possible while obtaining “clean margins” all around the tumor.

So far no imaging technique has been up to the task of resolving the melanoma accurately enough to guide surgery.

Instead surgeons tend to cut well beyond the visible margins of the lesion in order to be certain they remove all the malignant tissue.

Two scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have developed technologies that together promise to solve this difficult problem.

Their solution, described in the July issue of ACS Nano, combines an imaging technique developed by Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and a contrast agent developed by Younan Xia, PhD, the James M. McKelvey Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

Together, the imaging technique and contrast agent produce images of startling 3-dimensional clarity.

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Seeing melanoma | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis