Abstract
Acoustic-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (ARPAM) provides a spatial resolution on the order of tens of micrometers, and is becoming an essential tool for imaging fine structures, such as the subcutaneous microvasculature. High lateral resolution of ARPAM is achieved using high numerical aperture (NA) of acoustic transducer; however, the depth of focus and working distance will be deteriorated correspondingly, thus sacrificing the imaging range and accessible depth. The axial resolution of ARPAM is limited by the transducer's bandwidth. In this work, we develop deconvolution ARPAM (D-ARPAM) in three dimensions that can improve the lateral resolution by 1.8 and 3.7 times and the axial resolution by 1.7 and 2.7 times, depending on the adopted criteria, using a 20-MHz focused transducer without physically increasing its NA and bandwidth. The resolution enhancement in three dimensions by D-ARPAM is also demonstrated by in vivo imaging of the microvasculature of a chick embryo. The proposed D-ARPAM has potential for biomedical imaging that simultaneously requires high spatial resolution, extended imaging range, and long accessible depth.
Highlights
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a rapidly emerging imaging modality that combines the advantages of high optical contrast and low acoustic scattering [1, 2]
We first measure the original spatial resolutions of the imaging system and determine the enhanced resolutions after applying deconvolution algorithm to evaluate the improvement by the deconvolution acoustic-resolution PAM (ARPAM) in 3D
In order to experimentally measure the lateral resolution of our ARPAM, a 6-μm carbon fiber was imaged with unidirectional B scan
Summary
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a rapidly emerging imaging modality that combines the advantages of high optical contrast and low acoustic scattering [1, 2]. The generated PA waves are detected by ultrasonic transducers and used to form images which map the optical absorption distribution in biological tissues. To achieve high-resolution PA imaging, two types of PA microscopy (PAM) can be implemented using a wideband ultrasonic transducer. To further enhance the lateral resolution, optical-resolution PAM (ORPAM) employs tight optical focusing to realize resolution up to several micrometers or even a sub-micrometer scale [3, 13, 14]. In both types, high axial resolution is achieved by utilizing the wideband response to detect a short acoustic pulse
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