Real-Time Multispectral 3-D Photoacoustic Imaging of Blood Phantoms

Photoacoustic imaging is exquisitely sensitive to blood and can infer blood oxygenation based on multispectral images. In this work we present multispectral real-time 3D photoacoustic imaging of blood phantoms. We used a custom-built 128-channel hemispherical transducer array coupled to two Nd:YAG pumped OPO laser systems synchronized to provide double pulse excitation at 680 nm and 1064 nm wavelengths, all during a triggered series of ultrasound pressure measurements lasting less than 300 mu s. The results demonstrated that 3D PAI is capable of differentiating between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood at high speed at mm-level resolution.