Sentinel lymph node detection ex vivo using ultrasound-modulated optical tomography
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Updated: Jan 26, 2026

Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping and Biopsy for Endometrial Cancer at Early Stage with Laparoscopy
Published on: August 19, 2021
Chulhong Kim1, Kwang Hyun Song, Lihong V Wang
1Washington University in Saint Louis, Optical Imaging Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Campus Box 1097, One Brookings Drive, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130-4899, USA.
Abstract:
We apply ultrasound-modulated optical tomography (UOT) to image ex-vivo methylene-blue-dyed sentinel lymph nodes embedded in 3.2-cm-thick chicken breast tissues. The UOT system is implemented for the first time using ring-shaped light illumination, intense acoustic bursts, and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera-based speckle contrast detection. Since the system is noninvasive, nonionizing, portable, relatively cost effective, and easy to combine with photoacoustic imaging and single element ultrasonic pulse-echo imaging, UOT can potentially be a good imaging modality for the detection of sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer staging in vivo.
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