title: Realtime photoacoustic microscopy of murine cardiovascular dynamics.
abstract: Non-invasive visualization of cardiovascular dynamics in small animals is challenging due to their rapid heart-rates. We present a realtime photoacoustic imaging system consisting of a 30-MHz ultrasound array transducer, receive electronics, a high-repetition-rate laser, and a multicore-computer, and demonstrate its ability to image optically-absorbing structures of the beating hearts of young athymic nude mice at rates of approximately 50 frames per second with 100 microm x 25 microm spatial resolution. To our knowledge this is the first report of realtime photoacoustic imaging of physiological dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University, Optical Imaging Laboratory, St Louis, MO 63130, USA. zemp@ece.ualberta.ca
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Zemp
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bitton
authors.forename: K K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Shung
authors.forename: L V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002320:Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena; D002319:Cardiovascular System / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008027:Light; D051379:Mice; D008819:Mice, Nude; D033401:Microscopy, Acoustic / Q000379:methods*; D014741:Video Recording