Giant Cell Arteritis

This project focus on evaluating and optimizing photoacoustic (PA) imaging as a method to non invasively diagnose giant cell arthritis.

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) also known as temporal arteritis is a sight- and life-threatening, granulomatous large-vessel condition. Typical symptoms are headache, fever, fatigue, night sweats and weight loss. GCA may not only cause permanent loss of vision, but also lead to cerebrovascular stroke or myocardial infarction. Current recommendations for the management of GCA are immediate treatment with high-dose corticosteroids, that may continue for several years. Temporal artery biopsy is considered the gold standard in the diagnosis of GCA, in which a segment of the temporal artery is surgically excised and analyzed histopathologically to identify inflammatory lesions in the vessel wall. This technique has high specificity but low sensitivity. Furthermore, temporal artery biopsy is associated with several complications and risks, such as injury to the facial nerve and the trigeminal nerve, peri- and postoperative hemorrhage, wound infection, scarring, and skin necrosis.

This project aims to evaluate the use of photoacoustic (PA) imaging for the non-invasive diagnosis of GCA.

Encouraging results have been obtained in animal studies (by others), showing detailed images of small blood vessels with high resolution. However, PA imaging has not yet been approved for clinical use due to a lack of clinical data. So far we have adapted the PA technique for use in humans and managed problems associated with motion artefacts and disturbances from other endogenous chromophores. We are now proceeding with measurements on healthy volunteers and patients with suspected GCA to evaluate the feasibility of using PA imaging to examine the temporal artery, diagnose GCA and to confirm the safety regarding visual function.