Percutaneous biopsy of a nonpalpable breast mass with either US or stereotactic guidance is less expensive than surgery, but cost savings are greater with US-guided biopsy.

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High-performance imaging is essential for widespread applications of photoacoustic tomography (PAT) in biomedicine. So far, no comprehensive studies are reported on the impact of system factors on imaging performance, in spite of their importance. Based on a prototype PAT scanner, we study eight factors associated with the acoustic reception process in PAT, namely, detector view angle, element number, center frequency, bandwidth, aperture size, focusing, orientation error, and scan step angle error, and investigated how they impact on the image quality. Simulations and experiments are both presented to support the findings in this study. This work is expected to provide a practical guide for advanced PAT scanner design with enhanced imaging performance.

Photoacoustic imaging, with the capability to provide simultaneous structural, functional, and molecular information, is one of the fastest growing biomedical imaging modalities of recent times. As a hybrid modality, it not only provides greater penetration depth than the purely optical imaging techniques, but also provides optical contrast of molecular components in the living tissue. Conventionally, photoacoustic imaging systems utilize bulky and expensive class IV lasers, which is one of the key factors hindering the clinical translation of this promising modality. Use of LEDs which are portable and affordable offers a unique opportunity to accelerate the clinical translation of photoacoustics. In this paper, we first review the development history of LED as an illumination source in biomedical photoacoustic imaging. Key developments in this area, from point-source measurements to development of high-power LED arrays, are briefly discussed. Finally, we thoroughly review multiple phantom, ex-vivo, animal in-vivo, human in-vivo, and clinical pilot studies and demonstrate the unprecedented preclinical and clinical potential of LED-based photoacoustic imaging.

The feasibility of an innovative biomedical diagnostic technique, thermal photoacoustic (TPA) measurement, for non-ionizing and non-invasive assessment of bone health is investigated. Unlike conventional photoacoustic PA methods which are mostly focused on the measurement of absolute signal intensity, TPA targets the change in PA signal intensity as a function of the sample temperature, i.e. the temperature dependent Grueneisen parameter which is closely relevant to the chemical and molecular properties in the sample. Based on the differentiation measurement, the results from TPA technique are less susceptible to the variations associated with sample and system, and could be quantified with improved accurately. Due to the fact that the PA signal intensity from organic components such as blood changes faster than that from non-organic mineral under the same modulation of temperature, TPA measurement is able to objectively evaluate bone mineral density (BMD) and its loss as a result of osteoporosis. In an experiment on well-established rat models of bone loss and preservation, PA measurements of rat tibia bones were conducted over a temperature range from 37 °C to 44 °C. The slope of PA signal intensity verses temperature was quantified for each specimen. The comparison among three groups of specimens with different BMD shows that bones with lower BMD have higher slopes, demonstrating the potential of the proposed TPA technique in future clinical management of osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a progressive bone disease that is characterized by a decrease in bone mass and the deterioration in bone microarchitecture. This study investigates the feasibility of characterizing bone microstructure by analyzing the frequency spectrum of the photoacoustic (PA) signal from the bone. Modeling and numerical simulation of PA signal were performed on trabecular bone simulations and CT scans with different trabecular thicknesses. The resulting quasi-linear photoacoustic spectra were fittted by linear regression, from which the spectral parameter slope was quantified. The simulation based on two different models both demonstrate that bone specimens with thinner trabecular thicknesses have higher slope. Experiment on osteoporotic rat femoral heads with different mineral content was conducted. The finding from the experiment was in good agreement with the simulation, demonstrating that the frequency-domain analysis of PA signals can provide an objective assessment of bone microstructure and deterioration. Considering that PA measurement is non-ionizing, non-invasive, and has sufficient penetration in both calcified and non-calcified tissues, this new bone evaluation method based on photoacoustic spectral analysis holds potential for clinical management of osteoporosis and other bone diseases.

A 1.97 μm multiwavelength Tm-doped fiber laser based on a nonlinear amplifier loop mirror (NALM) has been experimentally demonstrated. The NALM with 500 m standard single mode fiber introduces intensity-dependent gain to alleviate mode competition caused by homogeneous gain broadening in Tm-doped fibers. At room temperature, up to 42 wavelengths with a wavelength spacing of 0.33 nm oscillate within a 10-dB bandwidth simultaneously. Repeat measurement of the laser spectrum shows the wavelength drift of a multiwavelength Tm-doped fiber laser is less than 0.05 nm in 40 min.

The stability of single-sideband (SSB) modulator based recirculating frequency shifter (RFS) is analyzed theoretically. The optimum radio frequency (RF) drive peak-to-peak voltage used to drive the modulator is studied with considering the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise of optical amplifier and crosstalk so as to obtain a maximum overall effective optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) which is defined to quantify the quality of generated tones. Small desired tones number and lower RF peak-to-peak voltage can reduce the crosstalk effectively. While the trade-off should be considered since the larger desired tones number it is, the higher optimum drive voltage should be used when the SSB-based RFS reached the maximum OSNR. The theoretical results show that the optimum operation condition is helpful to improve the performance of RFS which can be a good application for the T-bit/s optical transmission in practice.