Ultrasound-enhanced fine-needle aspiration for biopsy: From device development to in vivo human validation
Loading...
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Science |
Doctoral thesis (article-based)
| Defence date: 2025-17-01
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Authors
Date
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
87 + app. 65
Series
Aalto University publication series Doctoral Theses, 10/2025
Abstract
A hypodermic needle is a widely used medical instrument. With more than 16 billion needles used annually, it is an essential instrument of modern medicine. Medical needles are primarily used to deliver or draw material to or from a patient, playing a crucial role in various medical procedures. Despite the broad use of needles, limited technological improvements have been made to them over the last decades, leading to urgent unmet needs in applications such as biopsy. Biopsy is a medical procedure that aims to collect tissue from a suspected lesion for diagnosis. The analysis is intended to define what pathology is present in the target tissue and to decide on the potential treatment. While diagnostic techniques have improved, the quantity of tissue required has only grown due to the increasing range of assessment, each of them requiring part of the sample. Moreover, the tissue quantity and representativeness of the lesion is limited by the current techniques. To address this unmet clinical need, an Ultrasound-enhanced Fine-Needle Aspiration Biopsy (USeFNAB) has been proposed. USeFNAB utilizes ultrasonic actuation at the needle tip (peak-to-peak displacement < 200 μm) to detach the cells and tissue construct from the target. Combined with low pressure, USeFNAB aims to collect more tissue than the state-of-the-art methods to address the demand for increased tissue required for additional pathological analysis. To date, USeFNAB instrument has not been optimized in terms of power efficiency, ergonomics and size, and validation in human ex vivo and in vivo tissue has been missing. The aim of this Thesis was to develop a novel USeFNAB device capable of providing ultrasonic movement at the needle tip efficiently. This would allow miniaturization, battery integration, and improvement of the safety of the device. Once the device configurations were optimized in silico and prototyped, a validation of USeFNAB in tissue was conducted. USeFNAB was first tested on benign ex vivo human tonsils, and then on ex vivo human neo-plastic tissues (pleomorphic adenomas and head and neck cancers). Finally, the benefits of USeFNAB were demonstrated in a clinical trial on in vivo human pleomorphic adenomas. The results showed that the USeFNAB was capable to provide a flexural actuation at the needle tip with up to 73% electrical-to-acoustical power efficiency. It also demonstrated an increase in terms of mass collection in ex vivo human tissue by 2-7× compared to state-of-the-art needle biopsies without compromising the diagnosis outcome. Finally, in the in vivo clinical setting, USeFNAB showed a tissue area increase on the histological slide by 1.7-3.4× without compromising the diagnosis or increasing complications during the procedure as compared to state-of-the-art needle biopsies. The findings in this Thesis show promise for the USeFNAB to be the next-generation tool for cancer diagnosis. They also open avenues for applying ultrasound-enhanced medical needles to other applications, such as therapy.Description
Supervising professor
Kuzyk, Anton, Assoc. Prof., Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, FinlandNieminen, Heikki J., Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Finland
Thesis advisor
Ehnholm, Gösta, Docent, Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, FinlandNieminen, Heikki J., Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Finland
Keywords
Other note
Parts
-
[Publication 1]: Yohann Le Bourlout, Gosta Ehnholm, Heikki J. Nieminen. Multi-modal transducer-waveguide construct coupled to a medical needle. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 154(5), 3388–3396, November 2023.
Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202312117245DOI: 10.1121/10.0022326 View at publisher
-
[Publication 2]: Yohann Le Bourlout, Minna Rehell, Jetta Kelppe, Jaana Rautava, Emanuele Perra, Jouni Rantanen, Gosta Ehnholm, Nick Hayward, Kristofer Nyman, Kenneth P. H. Pritzker, Jussi Tarkkanen, Timo Atula, Katri Aro, Heikki J. Nieminen. Ultrasound-enhanced fine-needle biopsy improves yield in human epithelial and lymphoid tissue. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 50(8), 1247-1254, August 2024.
Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202407045067DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2024.04.015 View at publisher
- [Publication 3]: Minna Rehell*, Yohann Le Bourlout*, Jetta Kelppe, Jaana Rautava, Emanuele Perra, Jouni Rantanen, Gosta Ehnholm, Nick Hayward, Kristofer Nyman, Kenneth P. H. Pritzker, Jussi Tarkkanen, Timo Atula, Katri Aro, Heikki J. Nieminen. Ultrasound-enhanced fine-needle biopsy improves tissue yield in head and neck tumors ex vivo. Scientific Reports, Manuscript submitted on September 11th, 2024
- [Publication 4]: Mira Naukkarinen*, Yohann Le Bourlout*, Minna Rehell, Jetta Kelppe, Kristofer Nyman, Jaana Rautava, Sanjeev Ranjan, Gosta Ehnholm, Jouni Rantanen, Kenneth P. H. Pritzker, Jussi Tarkkanen, Katri Aro, Timo Atula, Heikki J. Nieminen. Ultrasound-enhanced fine needle biopsy of human salivary gland tumors in vivo. Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Manuscript submitted on December 4th, 2024