Original title: In-silico investigation into optimal photoacoustic probe design using a digital thyroid phantom
Max T Rietberg, Jeroen Veltman, Jelmer M Wolterink, Srirang Manohar · September 2026
Lumps on the thyroid gland are common, but most are not cancer. Doctors want to avoid doing unneeded procedures on harmless lumps. Standard ultrasound often cannot tell harmless lumps from harmful ones accurately enough. Researchers are studying photoacoustic imagingA technique that sends pulses of light into tissue, which absorb the light and heat up slightly, creating sound waves that can be detected to form an image., a method that uses light and sound to map tissue and measure oxygen levels. To find the best device design, the team used computer models to simulate how different imaging probes perform on a digital thyroid model. They discovered that the best standard setup with light shone from the outside uses two light wavelengths, 757 and 800 nm, plus a curved sound sensor. But lighting the tissue from inside the windpipe works significantly better using 700 and 800 nm light.
Imagine trying to check if a fruit is ripe by shining a flashlight on it from outside. You can see some color, but the skin and distance blur the details. Now imagine you could put a tiny light inside the fruit itself, right behind the spot you care about. The light passes through less material, so you get a much clearer reading. In this paper, the researchers found that shining light from inside the windpipe (endotracheal) instead of from outside the neck gives much better images of the thyroid.
Most thyroid nodules are harmless, but current ultrasound imaging often can't tell, leading to unnecessary biopsies or surgeries. Photoacoustic imaging could improve this by measuring oxygen levels in tissue, which helps distinguish benign from malignant nodules. This study simulates which probe designs work best, potentially guiding hardware that makes the technique accurate enough for real clinics.
The abstract does not specify whether the digital phantom accurately represents all patient thyroid anatomies or tissue variations. The results are from simulations only, not validated with physical phantoms or real patient data. The study also does not address practical challenges of endotracheal illumination, such as patient comfort or clinical workflow integration.
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In-silico investigation into optimal photoacoustic probe design using a digital thyroid phantom — Max T Rietberg, Jeroen Veltman, Jelmer M Wolterink et al. — Journal of biomedical optics — doi:10.1117/1.jbo.32.s1.s14902
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.