Photoacoustic imaging using lock-in amplification and pulsed fiber lasers

Lock-in amplification can provide high sensitive detection in noise that is orders of magnitude higher than the signal. Here, we report a photoacoustic methodology using pulsed fiber lasers and lock-in amplification. We demonstrate phantom measurements comparing the signal-to-noise of our lock-in technique with broadband time-domain measurements. Our lock-in technique was shown to exhibit signal-to-noise ratios significantly more sensitive than the broadband detection techniques.