A photoacoustic 3D imaging system for animal experiments was made. This system is special because it has a hemispherical detector array. To test its performance, we used a chart from the field of optics as a sample. We checked the whole imaging range using the ISO 12233 chart, which is used to test digital camera images. We found that there was no distortion in the xy-plane and the system had high resolution. We also tested it using a high image quality mode with a different scanning sequence. In this study, live albino mice with white hairs were anesthetized and photographed. Using hair removal cream, we were able to visualize the vascular network throughout their bodies, including blood vessels in organs such as the liver and kidneys. The smallest vessels we were able to visualize were less than 0.1 mm in diameter. We used photoacoustic (PA) images to relatively estimate the oxygen saturation of the mice's blood at two different wavelengths, which we refer to as the S-factor. By analyzing the PA images, we were able to estimate the arterial and venous systems of the whole body, as well as the difference in S-factor between the two systems within the liver. When the mice were euthanized and examined post-mortem, we observed that the S-factor of the whole body decreased and the difference in S-factor between the two systems within the liver was lost.
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