Abstract. Photoacoustic ophthalmoscopy (PAOM) is a newly developed retinal imaging technology that holds promise for both fundamental investigation and clinical diagnosis of several blinding diseases. Hence, integrating PAOM with other existing ophthalmic imaging modalities is important to identify and verify the strengths of PAOM compared with the established technologies and to provide the foundation for more comprehensive multimodal imaging. To this end, we developed a retinal imaging platform integrating PAOM with scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO), spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT), and fluorescein angiography (FA). In the system, all the imaging modalities shared the same optical scanning and delivery mechanisms, which enabled registered retinal imaging from all the modalities. High-resolution PAOM, SD-OCT, SLO, and FA images were acquired in both albino and pigmented rat eyes. The reported in vivo results demonstrate the capability of the integrated system to provide comprehensive anatomic imaging based on multiple optical contrasts.
We proposed to measure the metabolic rate of oxygen (MRO2) in small animals in vivo using a multimodal imaging system that combines laser-scanning optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (LSOR-PAM) and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). We first tested the capability of the multimodal system to measure flow rate in a phantom made of two capillary tubes of different diameters. We then demonstrated the capability of measuring MRO2 by imaging two parallel vessels selected from the ear of a Swiss Webster mouse. The hemoglobin oxygen saturation (sO2) and the vessel diameter were measured by the LSOR-PAM and the blood flow velocity was measured by the SD-OCT, from which blood flow rate and MRO2 were further calculated. The measured blood flow rates in the two vessels agreed with each other.
Abstract. We investigate the saturation effect, which describes the violation of the linearity between the measured photoacoustic amplitude and the object's optical absorption coefficient in functional photoacoustic imaging when the optical absorption in the object increases. We model the optical energy deposition and photoacoustic signal generation and detection in a semi-infinite optical absorbing object. Experiments are carried out by measuring photoacoustic signals generated from an ink-filled plastic tube. The saturation effect is studied by varying the optical absorption coefficient in the model and the ink concentration in the photoacoustic experiments. By changing the center frequency of the ultrasonic detector, the requirement to minimize the saturation effect in functional photoacoustic imaging is established.
Purpose: The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that higher amplitude of ultrashort laser induced photoacoustic signal can be achieved by multiple-pulse excitation when the temporal duration of the pulse train is less than the minimum of the medium's thermal relaxation time and stress relaxation time. Thus, improved signal-to-noise ratio can thus be attained through multiplepulse excitation while minimizing the energy of each pulse. Methods: The authors used a Michelson interferometer together with a picoseconds laser system to introduce two 6 ps pulses separated by a controllable delay by introducing a path length difference between the two arms of the interferometer. The authors then employed a series of three interferometers to create a pulse train consisting of eight pulses. The average pulse energy was 11 nJ and the temporal span of the pulse train was less than 1 ns. Results:The detected peak-to-peak amplitude of the multiple-pulse induced photoacoustic waves were linearly dependent on the number of pulses in the pulse train and such a linearity held for different optical absorption coefficients. The signal-to-noise ratio improved when the number of pulses increased. Moreover, nonlinear effects were not detected and no photoacoustic saturation effect was observed. Conclusions:The authors have shown that multiple-pulse excitation improves the signal-to-noise ratio through an accumulated energy deposition effect. This method is invaluable for photoacoustic measurements that require ultrashort laser pulses with minimized pulse energy to avoid laser damage. © 2010 American Association of Physicists in Medicine. ͓DOI: 10.1118/1.3352666͔ Key words: photoacoustic imaging, ultrasfast optics, multiple pulses Photoacoustic ͑PA͒ imaging is a powerful means of obtaining both anatomical and functional information of biological tissues 1-5 due to its unique optical-absorption-based contrast mechanism and capability to achieve high spatial resolution in deep tissue. PA imaging also plays an increasingly important role in molecular imaging and has been applied to study gene expression, 6 deeply seated fluorescent proteins, 7 and labeled proteins. 8 However, only linear optical absorption is currently used to produce PA signals, where the illuminating laser pulses have a typical pulse duration of a few nanoseconds and the spectral range covers from visible to nearinfrared wavelengths. When laser light irradiates biological tissue, linear optical absorption occurs simultaneously in many different molecules. As a result, the detected PA signal contains contributions from all optical-absorbing molecules and the contributions from different molecules are hard to separate. Although multiwavelength PA imaging shows potential in separating different optical-absorbing molecules, it still has limited applications for two reasons: First, optical absorption of hemoglobin and melanin can be a few orders of magnitude stronger than those of other molecules, depending on the optical wavelength. Second, many molecules have broad, over...
Since the photoacoustic effect relies only on the absorbed optical energy, the back-reflected photons from samples in optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy are usually discarded. By employing a 2 × 2 single-mode fiber optical coupler in a laser-scanning optical-resolution photoacoustic microscope for delivering the illuminating laser light and collecting the back reflected photons, a fiber-optic confocal microscope is integrated with the photoacoustic microscope. Thus, simultaneous multimodal imaging can be achieved with a single light source and images from the two modalities are intrinsically registered. Such capabilities are demonstrated in imaging both phantoms and small animals in vivo.
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