A method for concurrent photoacoustic (PA) and ultrasound (US) imaging with single laser pulses was previously demonstrated. An optical-absorbing multilayer film that can generate a US pulse based on the thermoelastic effect is used. With such a film, the generated US can be adjusted so that it does not overlap with the spectrum of the PA signal generated by the light transmitting through the layer. Thus, the US signal and the PA signal can be generated and separated by using a single laser pulse with spectral filtering. In this study, we continue with the same concurrent imaging approach and propose a cost-effective and portable design. The design consists of a pulsed laser diode with the repetition rate up to 25 kHz and energy of 2 μJ/pulse. A multilayer film is employed to generate narrow band US signals under laser excitation for US imaging. With simple spectral filtering, the PA signals and the US signals can be separated. With optical resolution, the system has a theoretical lateral resolution of 2 μm in PA imaging and 200 μm in US imaging. One of the applications of the proposed microscope is for tumor biology, where angiogenesis is an essential topic for understanding tumor growth and tumor metastasis. We will demonstrate performance of the proposed system by imaging vasculature networks.
Conventional ultrasound (US) and photoacoustic (PA) multimodality imaging require the use of a US pulse for US data acquisition and a laser pulse for PA data acquisition. We propose a method for concurrent US and PA data acquisition with a single-laser pulse. A light-absorbing multilayer film that can generate a US pulse based on the thermoelastic effect is used. The selection of appropriate layer thickness, interlayer spacing, and absorption coefficient allows the spectral characteristics of the generated US signal to be adjusted so that it does not overlap with the spectrum of the PA signal generated by the light transmitting through the layer. Thus, the US signal and the PA signal can be generated, received, and separated by using a single-laser pulse combined with spectral filtering. This method is demonstrated using a multilayer film that generates US signals with a center frequency of 24.2 MHz and fractional bandwidth of 26.8%. The synthetic-aperture focusing technique is applied to improve the lateral resolution and the signal-to-noise ratio. A cyst-like phantom and a film phantom were used to demonstrate the feasibility of this method of concurrent PA-US imaging using single-laser pulses.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.