Various phantoms have been used to assess the ability of transmission mode photoacoustic imaging to visualize blood vessels. A Q switched Nd:YAG laser operating at 1.06micrometers was used as the pulsed excitation source. Detection of the photoacoustic signals was achieved by mechanically scanning a photodiode across the reflected output beam of a Fabry Perot polymer film ultrasound sensor to simulate 1D and 2D detector arrays. The depth profile of a 1.3mm thick polymer sheet ((mu) _a=0.8mm^-1) immersed to a depth of 2cm in an Intralipid scattering solution ((mu) _s=1mm^-1, (mu) _a=0.03mm^-1 was imaged using a 1D detector scan and a simple line-of-sight approach to image reconstruction. An arrangement comprising three 3 lines of PMMA tubing of internal diameter 62.5micrometers , arranged at different heights and filled with human blood, was immersed at depths of up to 7mm in the Intralipid solution. Using a radial backprojection algorithm, 2D and 3D images were reconstructed from 1D and 2D detector scans respectively. The vessels could be observed as high contrast features on the images. Lateral resolution, limited by the detector aperture was 0.33mm and the axial resolution was 0.15mm.

Date Published: 10 June 2002
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 4618, Biomedical Optoacoustics III, (10 June 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.469848

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4618:
Biomedical Optoacoustics III
Alexander A. Oraevsky, Editor(s)