No abstract

Although paclitaxel (PTX) is used with platinum as the first line chemotherapy regimen for ovarian cancer, its clinical efficacy is often limited by severe adverse effects. Ultrasound targeted microbubble destruction (UTMD) technique holds a great promise in minimizing the side effects and maximizing the therapeutic efficacy. However, the technique typically uses non-targeted microbubbles with suboptimal efficiency. We synthesized targeted and PTX-loaded microbubbles (MBs) for UTMD mediated chemotherapy in ovarian cancer cells. PTX-loaded lipid MBs were coated with a luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone analogue (LHRHa) through a biotin-avidin linkage to target the ovarian cancer A2780/DDP cells that express the LHRH receptor. In the cell culture studies, PTX-loaded and LHRHa targeted MBs (TPLMBs) in combination with ultrasound (300 kHz, 0.5 W/cm2, 30 seconds) demonstrated anti-proliferative activities of 41.30 ± 3.93%, 67.76 ± 2.45%, and 75.93 ± 2.81% at 24 hours, 48 hours, and 72 hours after the treatment, respectively. The cell apoptosis ratio at 24 hours after the treatment is 32.6 ± 0.79 %, which is significantly higher than other treatment groups such as PTX only and no-targeted PTX-loaded MBs (NPLMBs) with or without ultrasound mediation. Our experiment verifies the hypothesis that ultrasound mediation of ovarian cancer targeted and drug loaded MBs will enhance the PTX therapeutic efficiency.

Hyperspectral reflectance imaging technique has been used for in vivo detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. However, the clinical outcome of this technique is suboptimal owing to multiple limitations such as nonuniform illumination, high-cost and bulky setup, and time-consuming data acquisition and processing. To overcome these limitations, we acquired the hyperspectral data cube in a wavelength ranging from 600 to 800 nm and processed it by a wide gap second derivative analysis method. This method effectively reduced the image artifacts caused by nonuniform illumination and background absorption. Furthermore, with second derivative analysis, only three specific wavelengths (620, 696, and 772 nm) are needed for tissue classification with optimal separability. Clinical feasibility of the proposed image analysis and classification method was tested in a clinical trial where cervical hyperspectral images from three patients were used for classification analysis. Our proposed method successfully classified the cervix tissue into three categories of normal, inflammation and high-grade lesion. These classification results were coincident with those by an experienced gynecology oncologist after applying acetic acid. Our preliminary clinical study has demonstrated the technical feasibility for in vivo and noninvasive detection of cervical neoplasia without acetic acid. Further clinical research is needed in order to establish a large-scale diagnostic database and optimize the tissue classification technique.

No abstract

We propose a multi-scale hyperspectral imaging method for noninvasive detection of cervical neoplasia. Comparison of the imaging results with those of gold standard histologic measurements demonstrates that the hyperspectral diagnostic imaging system can distinguish CIN at both tissue and cellular levels.