Bacteriophage-mediated identification of bacteria using photoacoustic flow cytometry,"

Melanoma is the deadliest skin cancer and is responsible for over 7000 deaths in the US annually. The spread of cancer, or metastasis, is responsible for these deaths, as secondary tumors interrupt normal organ function. Circulating tumor cells, or those cells that spread throughout the body from the primary tumor, are thought to be responsible for metastasis. We developed an optical method, photoacoustic flow cytometry, in order to detect and enumerate circulating melanoma cells (CMCs) from blood samples of patients. We tested the blood of Stage IV melanoma patients to show the ability of the photoacoustic flow cytometer to detect these rare cells in blood. We then tested the system on archived blood samples from Stage III melanoma patients with known outcomes to determine if detection of CMCs can predict future metastasis. We detected between 0 and 66 CMCs in Stage IV patients. For the Stage III study, we found that of those samples with CMCs, two remained disease free and five developed metastasis. Of those without CMCs, six remained disease free and one developed metastasis. We believe that photoacoustic detection of CMCs provides valuable information for the prediction of metastasis and we postulate a system for more accurate prognosis.

No abstract

A 3D printed re-usable box enclosure and two-piece cutting guide were developed to produce high quality 7T MR images that can be easily registered to gross anatomy and histology. Cuts can be made parallel or at multiple angles at 5mm intervals in both the axial and coronal orientations.

We investigated the impact of coupling (magnitude and phase) on the B1+ field distribution and intensity of a 30-channel double-rowed Tic-Tac-Toe (TTT) RF array. We found that by changing the coupling of the TTT coil modules, we are able to modify the B1+ distribution from a single channel and how the B1+ field intensity is spread between different Z levels of the 30-channel array. This effect was seen in both simulations and experimental B1+ maps.