Performance characterization of low-cost, high-speed, portable pulsed laser diode photoacoustic tomography (PLD-PAT) system.
Photoacoustic tomography systems that uses Q-switched Nd:YAG/OPO pulsed lasers are expensive, bulky, and hence limits its use in clinical applications. The low pulse repetition rate of these lasers makes it unsuitable for real-time imaging when used with single-element ultrasound detector. In this work, we present a pulsed laser diode photoacoustic tomography (PLD-PAT) system that integrates a compact PLD inside a single-detector circular scanning geometry. We compared its performance against the traditional Nd:YAG/OPO based PAT system in terms of imaging depth, resolution, imaging time etc. The PLD provides near-infrared pulses at ~803 nm wavelength with pulse energy ~1.4 mJ/pulse at 7 kHz repetition rate. The PLD-PAT system is capable of providing 2D image in scan time as small as 3 sec with a signal-to-noise ratio ~30. High-speed and deep-tissue imaging is demonstrated on phantoms and biological samples. The PLD-PAT system is inexpensive, portable, allows high-speed PAT imaging, and its performance is as good as traditional expensive OPO based PAT system. Therefore, it holds promises for future translational biomedical imaging applications.
School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 637459, Singapore.
Paul Kumar
PK
Upputuri
School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 637459, Singapore.
Manojit
M
Pramanik
(140.2010) Diode laser arrays; (170.0110) Imaging systems; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.5120) Photoacoustic imaging