Combining the absorption-based photoacoustic effect and intensity-dependent photobleaching effect, we demonstrate a simple method for super-resolution photoacoustic imaging of both fluorescent and non-fluorescent samples. Our method is based on a double-excitation process, where the first excitation pulse partially and inhomogeneously bleaches the molecules in the diffraction-limited excitation volume, thus biasing the signal contributions from a second excitation pulse striking the same region. By scanning the excitation beam, we performed three-dimensional sub-diffraction imaging of varied fluorescent and non-fluorescent species. A lateral resolution of 80 nm and an axial resolution of 370 nm have been demonstrated. This technique has the potential to enable label-free super-resolution imaging, and can be transferred to other optical imaging modalities or combined with other super-resolution methods.

Date Published: 11 March 2015
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 9323, Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2015, 932327 (11 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2077350

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9323:
Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2015
Alexander A. Oraevsky; Lihong V. Wang, Editor(s)