title: Laser-scanning photoacoustic microscopy with ultrasonic phased array transducer.
abstract: In this paper, we report our latest progress on proving the concept that ultrasonic phased array can improve the detection sensitivity and field of view (FOV) in laser-scanning photoacoustic microscopy (LS-PAM). A LS-PAM system with a one-dimensional (1D) ultrasonic phased array was built for the experiments. The 1D phased array transducer consists of 64 active elements with an overall active dimension of 3.2 mm × 2 mm. The system was tested on imaging phantom and mouse ear in vivo. Experiments showed a 15 dB increase of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) when beamforming was employed compared to the images acquired with each single element. The experimental results demonstrated that ultrasonic phased array can be a better candidate for LS-PAM in high sensitivity applications like ophthalmic imaging.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089,  USA.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Xiangyang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chi Tat
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.forename: Bill L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: K Kirk
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Shung
authors.forename: Hao F
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shuliang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jiao