Novel technique changes lymph node biopsy, reduces radiaiton exposure

Information obtained from a new application of photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is worth its weight in gold to breast cancer patients. For the first time, Washington University in St. Louis researchers Lihong Wang and Younan Xia, have used gold nanocages to map sentinel lymph nodes in a rat noninvasively using PAT. Wang's lab is the largest PAT lab in the world, credited with the invention of super-depth photoacoustic microscopy, and Xia's lab invented the gold nanocages.