Opto-Acoustic Imaging Leader Seno Medical Instruments Announces Recipient of Its 8th Annual Best Paper Award during the SPIE Annual Conference

-2017 award recognizes a novel optical imaging modality that provides high molecular contrast of
important biomarkers throughout the body –

SAN ANTONIO, January 30, 2018 – Seno Medical Instruments, Inc. (Seno Medical), the leader in new technology for breast cancer diagnosis using opto-acoustic (OA/US) imaging to differentiate benign from malignant masses, today announced the winner of the 2017 Best Paper Award at the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) “Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing” annual conference. This year’s award was given to a team of researchers from California Institute of Technology, Washington University in St. Louis, Duke University and Tsinghua University, Beijing who have developed a novel photoacoustic technology. Seno Medical has sponsored the award for the past eight years, which includes a Certificate of Accomplishment and a $3,000 cash prize.

The conference, held under the auspices of the SPIE/BIOS Photonics West symposium, is the largest international forum for the biomedical opto-acoustics research community, held this week in San Francisco January 27th – 31st. More than 250 papers representing the latest results in imaging and sensing technologies, including both clinical and pre-clinical applications, are presented.

The field of biomedical opto-acoustic (photoacoustic) imaging continues to experience rapid growth. In 2017, the total number of research papers published in peer-reviewed literature on the subject of opto-acoustic imaging exceeded 500, and the total number of papers published on the technology now exceeds 5,000. The number and sophistication of papers reporting on opto-acoustic clinical applications and commercial grade systems have been increasing since the beginning of the 21st century, a trend that became even more prominent at this year’s conference. There are approximately 1,000 attendees at the symposium, and the clinical application sessions achieved standing-room-only attendance.

“As a leader in applying opto-acoustic imaging to advance the diagnosis of breast cancer, we know firsthand that these technologies have tremendous potential in improving patient care and outcomes,” said Steven Miller, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Seno Medical. “Seno Medical is committed to fostering innovation that helps advance patient care, and we are excited about the increased number and sophistication of papers reporting on opto-acoustic clinical applications and commercial grade systems at this year’s conference. The technology described in the award-winning paper has the potential to significantly improve the resolution of whole-body dynamic imaging for small animals used in many areas of medical research from pathology to oncology.”

The 2017 Best Paper Award was given to the team for their work on the study Imaging Small-animal Wholebody Dynamics by Single-impulse Panoramic Photoacoustic Computed Tomography. Seno Medical congratulates the papers’ authors, Lei Li, Liren Zhu, Cheng Ma, Li Lin, Junjie Yao, Lidai Wang, Konstantin Maslov, Ruiying Zhang, Wanyi Chen, Junhui Shi, and Lihong V. Wang. The company also thanks the Organizing Committee and the contributors to this conference for their ongoing efforts to support the transformation of biomedical opto-acoustics and photoacoustics into clinical applications that can address real unmet needs within the healthcare system.

The Single-impulse Panoramic Photoacoustic Computed Tomography (SIP-PACT) technology substantially enhances imaging performance to complement existing modalities for small animal whole-body imaging. This technology non-invasively images mouse anatomy real-time, with clearly viewed sub-organ vasculature and structure. SIP-PACT as a whole-body imaging tool for small animals will enable widespread applications in fundamental biology, pathology, oncology and other areas.

Two other papers were selected as finalists for the 2017 award:

• Photoacoustic analysis of thyroid cancer in vivo: A pilot study, by Jeesu Kima, Min-Hee Kimb, Kwanhoon Jo, Jeonghoon Hab, Yongmin Kim, Dong-Jun Lim, and Chulhong Kim
• Possibility of transrectal photoacoustic imaging-guided biopsy for detection of prostate cancer, by Miya Ishihara, Masayuki Shinchib, Akio Horiguchi, Hiroshi Shinmotoc, Hitoshi Tsudad, Kaku Irisawae, Takatsugu Wadae, and Tomohiko Asanob.

About Seno Medical Instruments, Inc.

Seno Medical Instruments, Inc. is a San Antonio, Texas-based medical imaging company committed to the development and commercialization of a new modality in cancer diagnosis: opto-acoustic imaging. Seno’s Imagio™ breast imaging system fuses opto-acoustic technology with ultrasound to generate functional and anatomical images of the breast. The opto-acoustic images provide a unique color map in and around suspicious breast masses while the ultrasound provides a traditional anatomic image. Through the appearance or absence of the two hallmark indicators of cancer – angiogenesis and deoxygenation – Seno believes that Imagio™  images will be a more effective tool to help radiologists confirm or rule out malignancy than current diagnostic imaging modalities – without exposing patients to potentially harmful ionizing radiation (x-rays) or contrast agents. Seno’s platform technology may also address other disease applications in organs other than the breast, as well as assessing other breast problems, such as early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy or hormonal treatments of breast cancer. To learn more about Seno’s opto-acoustic imaging technology and applications, visit www.SenoMedical.com