New handheld scanner technology could transform cancer and arthritis diagnosis

In the study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the UCL team delivered photoacoustic tomography (PAT) imaging scans to doctors in real time, providing them with accurate and intricate images of blood vessels to further help inform patient care.

Photoacoustic tomography imaging uses laser-generated ultrasound waves to visualise subtle changes – an early marker of disease – in the less-than-millimetre-scale veins and arteries up to 15mm deep in human tissues.

However, the researcher said that up until now, existing PAT technology has been too slow to produce high-enough quality 3D images for use by clinicians.

During a PAT scan patients must be completely motionless, meaning any movement during a slower scan can cause images to blur and therefore not guarantee clinically useful images.

The older PAT scanners took over five minutes to take an image – by reducing that time to a few seconds or less, image quality is much improved and far more suitable for people who are frail or poorly.