Optical measurement of wide bandwidth ultrasound fields

Abstract

A technique for measuring instantaneous three-dimensional pressure in a wideband ultrasound pulse is presented. A collimated laser pulse impinges on the ultrasound field, and the optical intensity in a diffraction plane subsequent to this scattering event is imaged onto a CCD camera and stored. Timing is controlled precisely, allowing the acousto-optic interaction to occur at the same point in the temporal evolution of the sound field each time the experiment is performed. After interaction with the ultrasound pulse, the optical phase is approximately proportional to the ray sum of instantaneous pressure in the pulse (taken in the direction of optical propagation). Optical phase immediately subsequent to passage through the ultrasound pulse is computed from recorded optical intensity via a phase retrieval algorithm. The experiment is performed at several angles as the ultrasound transducer is rotated about an axis normal to the optical axis of the imaging system. Tomographic reconstruction algorithms are applied to the retrieved optical phase data, computing pressure at all points in the ultrasound pulse. The resulting pulse may be propagated forward or backward in time under a source-free model. Reconstructions of the field from a 2.5-MHz array transducer compare well with hydrophone measurements.