Detecting metastatic potential of cancer through longitudinal vasculature imaging of biomaterial scaffold using non-invasive in vivo photoacoustic microscopy and OCT

In this work, we demonstrated the potential that multimodality imaging of angiogenesis in biomaterial scaffolds can detect early-stage breast cancer in a murine model. By conducting in vivo photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) imaging of vascularization on the tumor-bearing and tumor-free groups, significant differences of several vasculature related parameters were found after tumor inoculation, and more neovascularization was discovered in tumor-bearing group. Additionally, optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging was performed to provide 3D morphology information of the scaffold which offered similar microenvironment for tumor growth. Imaging results were also validated by IHC histology analysis, further suggesting the accuracy of the imaging.