传统肿瘤诊断设备大多只能从对肿瘤的形态影像进行刻画，无法从分子、细胞、微血管密度、功能等层面对在体肿瘤实现精准边界界定。近年来，光声成像技术的发展为肿瘤边界精准界定带来了机遇，但目前尚无法实现小动物全身高速和跨尺度分子影像。为此，基于团队在光声功能和分子影像的研究基础，本项目将开展以下突破性研究：（1）双光源光路、双阵列式光声/超声探头和成像系统设计，实现高速、多模态、跨尺度的功能与分子成像；（2）光声引导的快速波前整形技术，实现生物体内高分辨率无创光学聚焦，并用于提高成像分辨率和探测深度，使之满足小动物全身光声成像的需求；⑶可开关肿瘤特异性分子探针，实现在富血供环境中对肿瘤分子的高对比度成像。项目的最终目标是研发国际领先的、具有自主知识产权的小动物全身高速光声分子影像设备，并以肝癌为例将之应用于并解决在体肿瘤边界精准界定这一关键科学问题。因此，本设备项目的研制具有重要科学价值和意义。

Most existing traditional tumor diagnosis instruments provide only morphological information of the tumors,but cannot precisely identify the in-vivo tumor boundaries on the molecular, cellular, microvascular, and functional levels. Recent developments in photoacoustic imaging bring new opportunity for such purpose, but none so far has obtained small-animal whole-body multiscale high-speed imaging. Built on the foundation on photoacoustic functional and molecular imaging, this project aims to work on the following breakthroughs: (1) design of a dual laser source, dual ultrasonic transducer array photoacoustic imaging system to achieve high-speed optical/acoustic multimodality and multiscale functional and molecular imaging; (2) high-speed photoacoustically guided wavefront shaping technique to achieve in-vivo high-resolution noninvasive optical focusing, as well as improving imaging resolution and penetration depth,and hence fulfill the requirement of small-animal whole-body photoacoustic imaging; (3) switchable tumor-targeted molecular probes to achieve high-contract imaging of tumor molecules even within blood-rich environment. The ultimate goal of the project is to develop an internationally leading and patentable small-animal whole-body high-speed photoacoustic molecular imaging instrument that can be used for precise diagnosis of early stage tumor (e.g. liver cancer) and identification of tumor boundaries, which remains a key scientific challenge in biomedicine to date. if funded and successfully developed, the proposed study can have significant scientific and clinical impacts.