Yi Jiaqiang, Nguyen Kim-Cuong T, Wang Wenda, Yang Wenshuai, Pan Mingfei, Lou Edmond, Major Paul W, Le Lawrence H, Zeng Hongbo
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1H9, Canada.
Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R7, Canada.
ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2020 Dec 21;3(12):8943-8952. doi: 10.1021/acsabm.0c01211. Epub 2020 Nov 19.
Periodontal diseases could be diagnosed through intraoral ultrasound imaging with the advantages of simple operation procedures, low cost, and low safety risks. A couplant is normally placed between transducers and tissues for better ultrasound image quality. If applied intraorally, the couplants should possess good stability in water and robust mechanical properties, as well as strong adhesiveness to transducers and tissues. However, commercial couplants, such as Aquaflex (AF) cannot fulfill these requirements. In this work, inspired by the mussel adhesion mechanism, we reported a poly(vinyl alcohol)-polyacrylamide-polydopamine (PVA-PAM-PDA) hydrogel synthesized by incorporating PDA into the PAM-PVA double-network for intraoral ultrasound imaging. The hydrogel maintains good stability in water as well as exceptional mechanical properties and can adhere to different substrates (i.e., metal, glass, and porcine skin) without losing the original adhesion strength after multiple adhesion-strip cycles. Besides, when applied to porcine mandibular incisor imaging, the PVA-PAM-PDA hydrogel possesses good image quality for diagnosis as AF does. This work provides practical insights into the fabrication of multifunctional hydrogel-based interfaces between human tissues and medical devices for disease diagnosis applications.
牙周疾病可通过口腔内超声成像进行诊断，其具有操作程序简单、成本低和安全风险低的优点。通常在换能器和组织之间放置耦合剂以获得更好的超声图像质量。如果在口腔内应用，耦合剂应在水中具有良好的稳定性、强大的机械性能，以及对换能器和组织的强粘附性。然而，商业耦合剂，如Aquaflex（AF）无法满足这些要求。在这项工作中，受贻贝粘附机制的启发，我们报道了一种通过将多巴胺（PDA）掺入聚丙烯酰胺-聚乙烯醇（PAM-PVA）双网络中合成的聚乙烯醇-聚丙烯酰胺-多巴胺（PVA-PAM-PDA）水凝胶，用于口腔内超声成像。该水凝胶在水中保持良好的稳定性以及优异的机械性能，并且可以粘附到不同的基材（即金属、玻璃和猪皮）上，在多次粘附-剥离循环后不会失去原始粘附强度。此外，当应用于猪下颌切牙成像时，PVA-PAM-PDA水凝胶与AF一样具有良好的诊断图像质量。这项工作为用于疾病诊断应用的人体组织和医疗设备之间基于多功能水凝胶的界面制造提供了实际见解。
