Cost-effective design of a concurrent photoacoustic-ultrasound microscope using single laser pulses

Abstract

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.