Abstract
Simultaneous photoacoustic and ultrasound (PAUS) imaging has attracted increasing attention in biomedical research to probe the optical and mechanical properties of tissue. However, the resolution for majority of the existing PAUS systems is on the order of 1 mm as the majority are designed for clinical use with low-frequency US detection. Here we developed a concurrent PAUS microscopy that consists of optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) and high-frequency US pulse-echo imaging. This dual-modality system utilizes a novel coaxial dual-element ultrasonic transducer (DE-UST) and provides anatomical and functional information with complementary contrast mechanisms, achieving a spatial resolution of 7 μm for PA imaging and 106 μm for US imaging. We performed phantom studies to validate the system’s performance. The vasculature of a mouse’s hind paw was imaged to demonstrate the potential of this hybrid system for biomedical applications.
Highlights
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging uses optical absorption as the contrast mechanism and can visualize the optical properties of tissue [1]
By correctly setting up the time delay between laser, US, and data acquisition card (DAQ), all US and PA images were automatically co-registered. This phantom experiment demonstrates that the concurrent photoacoustic and ultrasound (PAUS) imaging can simultaneously provide high resolution optical absorption information from the PA imaging and deep acoustic scattering information from the US image
The majority of existing integrated PAUS systems do not have a good enough resolution to qualify as microscopes
Summary
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging uses optical absorption as the contrast mechanism and can visualize the optical properties of tissue [1]. As a dual-modality imaging system, the merits of PAUS imaging can be summarized as follows: 1) PA imaging provides functional and molecular information about tissue and US imaging enables anatomical localization [11, 13]. This allows the integrated PAUS system to identify structural and functional abnormalities and diseases [15], enhance the sensitivity and specificity of early stage cancer diagnosis and metastases detection [11, 13, 16], and guide interventional procedures such as needle injection and laser ablation with higher contrast [8, 13, 17]. With the commercial programmable US systems currently available, PA imaging can be readily integrated into an US system [12, 14, 18, 19], and PA and US images can be co-registered. 3) morphologic information provided by US imaging such as tissue boundaries, speed of sound, and acoustic attenuation may aid in the reconstruction of PA images [18, 20,21,22]
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