5.5.2.4　Screening of sentinel lymph nodes

Biopsy followed by hematoxylin and eosin staining is the standard of care in assessing metastatic melanomas in sentinel lymph nodes.However，incomplete examination of the sentinel lymph nodes may miss melanoma cells and thus leads to misdiagnosis of metastasis.For complete sentinel lymph node assessment，photoacoustic tomography，with its high sensitivity for melanoma imaging，is a promising modality.Specifically，melanoma cells hidden in a pig lymph node and melanoma metastasis in human sentinel lymph nodes can be effectively identified with a typical photoacoustic computed tomography system.Thus，it is believed that photoacoustic tomography could potentially be applied for detecting melanoma metastasis in SLNs in vivo（Figure 5-12）.(https://www.daowen.com)