Characterizing Muscle Components in Intestinal Strictures Using Spectroscopic Photoacoustic Imaging

Inflammatory bowel disease is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes obstructive intestinal strictures, characterized by inflammation, fibrosis, and muscular hypertrophy. Accurately characterizing the stricture pathology for therapeutic planning remains challenging. In our previous study, using multispectral photoacoustic (PA) imaging, we investigated the feasibility of quantifying the hemoglobin and collagen components, corresponding to the inflammation and fibrosis, respectively, in animals in vivo and human subjects. In this study, we investigated resolving the myoglobin component that is associated with muscular hypertrophy with PA imaging. We quantified the hemoglobin and myoglobin ratios in a controlled phantom. We visualized the distribution of the tissue components in porcine tissue samples ex vivo. We also examined PA imaging in quantifying tissue components in human intestinal strictures and unstrictured margin ex vivo and in rabbits in vivo. The results show that PA imaging is a promising tool for characterizing the pathology of intestinal strictures.