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While surgical resection is a mainstay of cancer treatment, many tumors are unresectable due to stage, location, or comorbidities. Ablative therapies, which cause local destruction of tumors, are effective alternatives to surgical excision in several settings. Ethanol ablation is one such ablative treatment modality in which ethanol is directly injected into tumor nodules. Ethanol, however, tends to leak out of the tumor and into adjacent tissue structures, and its biodistribution is difficult to monitor in vivo. To address these challenges, this study presents a cutting‐edge technology known as Light‐Activatable Sustained‐Exposure Ethanol Injection Technology (LASEIT). LASEIT comprises a three‐part formulation: (1) ethanol, (2) benzoporphyrin derivative, which enables fluorescence‐based tracking of drug distribution and the potential application of photodynamic therapy, and (3) ethyl cellulose, which forms a gel upon injection into tissue to facilitate drug retention. In vitro drug release studies showed that ethyl cellulose slowed the rate of release in LASEIT by 7×. Injections in liver tissues demonstrated a 6× improvement in volume distribution when using LASEIT compared to controls. In vivo experiments in a mouse pancreatic cancer xenograft model showed LASEIT exhibited significantly stronger average radiant efficiency than controls and persisted in tumors for up to 7 days compared to controls, which only persisted for less than 24 h. In summary, this study introduced LASEIT as a novel technology that enabled real‐time fluorescence monitoring of drug distribution both ex vivo and in vivo. Further research exploring the efficacy of LASEIT is strongly warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surgeons need surgical navigation and intraoperative imaging for accurate surgery. However, current clinical surgical navigation systems have many drawbacks, including the need of fiducial markers, the lack of real-time registration update, and lack of functional imaging. We have developed a novel Real-time Fluorescence Imaging Topography Scanning (RFITS) system that delivers simultaneous real-time multimodal optical imaging, CT-to-Optical image registration, and dynamic fiducial-free surgical navigation. The RFITS prototype was characterized to evaluate system performance and used in biological models for fluorescence-guided surgery. We also performed multimodal imaging of a casting life-sized human cranial model and investigated image registration between intraoperative optical image data and preoperative tomographic image data. The RFITS prototype successfully integrated real-time intraoperative optical imaging and dynamic CT-based surgical navigation, offering complementary functional and structural information for surgical guidance. Our results demonstrated that the RFITS system can provide accurate multimodal surgical guidance in preclinical studies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a system capable of concurrent intraoperative fluorescence imaging and dynamic, real-time, CT-based navigation, whereas multiple modalities are accurately registered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]