Photoacoustic molecular imaging for in vivo liver iron quantitation Maccarinelli, Federica Carmona Rodríguez-Acosta, Fernando Regoni, Maria Arosio, Paolo Photoacoustic Iron Ferritin Multispetral optoacoustic tomography Maccarinelli, F.; et al. Photoacoustic molecular imaging for in vivo liver iron quantitation. Journal of Biomedical Optics 21(5): 056008 (2016). (Mar 1, 2016). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.21.5.056008 Copyright 2017 Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this publication for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the contents of the publication are prohibited. A recent study showed that ferritin is a suitable endogenous contrast agent for photoacoustic molecular imaging in cultured mammalian cells. We have therefore tested whether this imaging technique can be used for in vivo quantification of iron in mouse livers. To verify this hypothesis, we used multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) to image albino CD1 mice before and after experimental iron loading. Postmortem assays showed that the iron treatment caused a 15-fold increase in liver iron and a 40-fold increase in liver ferritin levels, while in vivo longitudinal analysis using MSOT revealed just a 1.6-fold increase in the ferritin/iron photoacoustic signal in the same animals. We conclude that MSOT can monitor changes in ferritin/iron levels in vivo, but its sensitivity is much lower than that of ex vivo iron assays. 2017-07-24T10:00:05Z 2017-07-24T10:00:05Z 2016 journal article Maccarinelli, F.; et al. Photoacoustic molecular imaging for in vivo liver iron quantitation. Journal of Biomedical Optics 21(5): 056008 (2016). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/47249] 1083-3668 1560-2281 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/47249 10.1117/1.JBO.21.5.056008 eng open access Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)