Assistant Prof. Shiva Abbaszadeh and Prof. Ling-Jian Meng both are contributing to the fight against cancer by developing new imaging technologies. Each faculty member has received a $2 million National Institutes of Health grant in support of their individual projects.
Head and Neck Cancer
Abbaszadeh is developing a high spatial resolution imaging scanner that will assist doctors treating head and neck cancer patients. She proposes a device that will accurately determine the extent of the disease, detect smaller lymph nodes, and assess cancer recurrence earlier.
“Current head and neck cancer diagnosis and treatment planning suffers from poor spatial resolution of whole-body positron emission tomography (WB-PET) scans,” Abbaszadeh said. “In the neck, where tissue layers are thin, the spatial resolution of WB-PET (4-6 mm) is not sufficient to evaluate small lymph nodes (<5 mm), establish how far the tumor has invaded locally, and guide the decision to resect a tumor rather than irradiate and deliver chemotherapy.
“In this project, we seek to address this problem by translating high resolution radiation detection technology to head and neck imaging,” Abbaszadeh continued.
The project research team consists of Abbaszadeh’s research group from her Radiological Instrumentation Laboratory at NPRE, and eV Products Inc., a world leader in semiconductors for radiation detection.
“We will pursue the design, development, optimization, characterization, and validation of a dedicated head and neck PET scanner,” she said. “The proposed system will be the first head and neck scanner to exhibit features as small as 1 mm with high photon sensitivity, enabled by the use of high energy and spatial resolution properties of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) crystals.”
The system will be integrated into a transportable stage and will be designed not to interfere with the conventional workflow of the WB-PET scan procedure. Additionally, the system can be used for dynamic PET studies.
Abbaszadeh’s team will collaborate with Dr. Deana McDonagh, professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Dr. Jinyi Qi, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California-Davis.
“Dr. McDonagh will provide advice on empathic design strategies and help with specifying requirements for the gantry design. Dr. Qi will provide feedback on image reconstruction strategies and image registration,” Abbaszadeh said. “In the final year of the project, we will collaborate with Dr. (Brett) Yockey and Dr. (Daniel) Barnett from Carle Foundation Hospital. A study consisting of 20 patients will be conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed prototype and validate the potential benefits.”
Abbaszadeh’s graduate student, Mohan Li, has gained a C★STAR Graduate Fellowship to conduct research on the project. The Cancer Scholars for Translational and Applied Research Graduate Fellowships, awarded from a partnership of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Carle Foundation Hospital, are designed for graduate students pursuing a career in cancer-based translational research.
XFET Imaging
Meng and his collaborators are developing X-ray Fluorescence Emission Tomography (XFET) imaging techniques to map metal-based compounds used to enhance radiation therapy in cancer treatment.
With assistance from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Chicago collaborators, Meng’s group is developing an ultrahigh sensitivity, broadband X-ray fluorescence emission tomography (XFET) system. The facility will combine advanced semiconductor imaging spectrometers assembled in a customized single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)-inspired detection system with optimized source/filtering configurations.
The new system is expected to achieve a dramatically improved sensitivity to a broad range of metal elements that emit fluorescence X-rays. It would be ideally suited for imaging heavier elements, such as gold (Au), gadolinium (Gd), lanthanum (La), hydrogen fluoride (Hf), palladium (Pt), bismuth (Bi), cerium (Ce), iodine (I), cadmium (Cd) and selenium (Se) with adequate tissue penetration within small animals such as mice.
Recently, nanoparticles containing metals such as gold, palladium and hafnium have gained substantial attention for their potential to improve cancer therapy by enhancing cancer-specific X-ray absorption and generating radio-dynamic effects targeting cancer cells. The use of these metal-containing nano-agents offers the potential of significantly reduced radiation dose to the patients and improve the therapeutic efficacy to tumors located in deep tissue.
The XFET imaging techniques Meng and his group are developing will offer a unique imaging tool for guiding and monitoring the delivery of radiation-induced and nanoparticle-mediated radiation therapy.
This new project fits well within the mission of the Radio-Opto-Nano (RON) Working Group that Meng has established at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, along with more than 15 other faculty members of Material Science and Engineering, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology and Veterinary Medicine on the University of Illinois Urbana campus. The group focuses on the interface among radiological sciences, optical techniques, and nano-materials, with an emphasis on combining penetrative ionizing radiation and radio-reactive nanomaterials to introduce precisely controlled physical, chemical and biological interactions in deep tissue.
To facilitate this broad range of research and developmental effort, Meng’s group and his collaborators are developing cutting-edge nuclear (SPECT and PET) and functional X-ray imaging (X-ray fluorescence CT, X-ray luminescence CT) techniques for quantitative assessment of radio-induced drug activation/excitation and therapeutic delivery processes within deep tissue. This recent NIH award would offer a tremendous opportunity for the group to build up a comprehensive experimental facility to study the physical, chemical and biological interaction of bio-materials with X-ray radiation.