Feasibility study on photoacoustic guidance for high-intensity focused ultrasound-induced hemostasis

The feasibility of photoacoustic imaging (PAI) application was evaluated to map punctured blood vessels thermally treated by high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for hemostasis. A single-element HIFU transducer with a central frequency of 2.0 MHz, was used to induce thermal hemostasis on the punctured arteries. The HIFU-treated lesion was imaged and localized by high-contrast PAI guidance. The results showed that complete hemostasis was achieved after treatment of the damaged blood vessels within 25 to 52 s at the acoustic intensity of 3600  W/cm 2 . The coagulation time for the animal artery was ∼20% longer than that of the phantom possibly due to a lower Young’s modulus. The reconstructed PA images were able to distinguish the treated area from the surrounding tissue in terms of augmented signal amplitudes (up to three times). Spectroscopic studies demonstrated that the optimal imaging wavelength was found to be 700 nm in order to reconstruct high-contrast photoacoustic images on HIFU-treated lesions. The proposed PAI integrated with HIFU treatment can be a feasible application to obtain safe and rapid hemostasis for acute arterial bleeding.