Intracorporeal imaging and differentiation of living tissue with an ultra-high-frequency ultrasound probe.
Intraoperative diagnostic tissue differentiation is expected to be useful clinically. We have fabricated a 3-mm diameter rod-shaped ultrasound (US) probe mounted with a 120-MHz transducer whose lateral resolution is the same as the cellular size of 13 microm. The probe can image a microscopic structure (i.e., the cellular arrangement inside intracorporeal living tissue). We imaged normal kidney tissue of a living mouse and tumor tissue implanted in another mouse kidney. We anesthetized the mice, exteriorized the kidneys, and punctured the kidneys with the probe. Renal corpuscle-like structures were seen in the healthy kidney, but a wavy spindle-like structure was seen in the tumor. The similarity between the ultrasonic images and histological sections taken from the imaged organs demonstrates the possibility of real-time tissue differentiation by ultra-high-frequency US.
Yokosawa
K
K
Medical Systems Research Department, Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Kokubunji, Tokyo, Japan. yokosawa@crl.hitachi.co.jp
Sasaki
K
K
Umemura
S
S
Shinomura
R
R
Ishikawa
S
S
Sano
S
S
Ito
Y
Y
D000818:Animals; D002277:Carcinoma / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D007668:Kidney / Q000166:cytology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D007680:Kidney Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D014463:Ultrasonography