A promising alternative ultrasound detection scheme in photoacoustic imaging is the use of an optical camera to achieve massively parallelized data acquisition. For this purpose, the millions of pixels of common CMOS- or CCD-cameras are used to capture ultrasound-induced intensity modulations of a light field. Depending on the interaction mechanism in the propagation medium or at an interface, either projections or sectional images of the pressure field are recorded directly by means of free beam propagation or indirectly via optical fibers at certain times of wave propagation. Here we present the functionality of different experimental implementations and discusses their advantages and disadvantages in terms of achievable sensitivity, bandwidth, data structure, image acquisition rate, suitability for multimodal imaging, compactness of the implementation and gives an outlook on future new developments in this direction.
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