Motorized photoacoustic tomography probe for label-free improvement in image quality

Gurneet S. Sangha; Nick H. Hale; Craig J. Goergen

doi:10.1117/12.2289062

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19 February 2018 Motorized photoacoustic tomography probe for label-free improvement in image quality

Gurneet S. Sangha, Nick H. Hale, Craig J. Goergen

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Proceedings Volume 10486, Design and Quality for Biomedical Technologies XI; 1048604 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2289062
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2018, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

One of the challenges in high-resolution in vivo lipid-based photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is improving penetration depth and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) past subcutaneous fat absorbers. A potential solution is to create optical manipulation techniques to maximize the photon density within a region of interest. Here, we present a motorized PAT probe that is capable of tuning the depth in which light is focused, as well as substantially reducing probe-skin artifacts that can obscure image interpretation. Our PAT system consists of a Nd:YAG laser (Surelite EX, Continuum) coupled with a 40 MHz central frequency ultrasound transducer (Vevo2100, FUJIFILM Visual Sonics). This system allows us to deliver 10 Hz, 5 ns light pulses with fluence of 40 mJ/cm² to the tissue interest and reconstruct PAT and ultrasound images with axial resolutions of 125 µm and 40 µm, respectively. The motorized PAT holder was validated by imaging a polyethylene-50 tubing embedded polyvinyl alcohol phantom and periaortic fat on apolipoprotein-E deficient mice. We used 1210 nm light for this study, as this wavelength generates PAT signal for both lipids and polyethylene-50 tubes. Ex vivo results showed a 2 mm improvement in penetration depth and in vivo experiments showed an increase in lipid SNR of at least 62%. Our PAT probe also utilizes a 7 μm aluminum filter to prevent in vivo probe-skin reflection artifacts that have been previously resolved using image post-processing techniques. Using this optimized PAT probe, we can direct light to various depths within tissue to improve image quality and prevent reflection artifacts.

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Gurneet S. Sangha, Nick H. Hale, and Craig J. Goergen "Motorized photoacoustic tomography probe for label-free improvement in image quality", Proc. SPIE 10486, Design and Quality for Biomedical Technologies XI, 1048604 (19 February 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2289062

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