Remote photoacoustic imaging on solid material using a two-wave mixing interferometer.

We report on remote and contactless photoacoustic imaging (PAI) for the inspection of solid materials using a two-wave mixing interferometer. In this Letter, a semitransparent sample was excited with picosecond laser pulses. The local absorption of the electromagnetic radiation led to generation of broadband ultrasonic waves inside the sample. Ultrasonic waves arriving at the sample surface were detected utilizing a two-wave mixing interferometer. After data acquisition, the initial pressure distribution was reconstructed using a Fourier space synthetic aperture technique algorithm. We show the potential of PAI for the inspection of semitransparent solid materials.

[1]  L.J. Busse.  Three-dimensional imaging using a frequency-domain synthetic aperture focusing technique , 1992, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[2]  Vasan Venugopalan,et al.  Optoacoustic tomography using time-resolved interferometric detection of surface displacement. , 2003, Journal of biomedical optics.

[3]  Vasan Venugopalan,et al.  Optoacoustic imaging based on the interferometric measurement of surface displacement. , 2007, Journal of biomedical optics.

[4]  A Blouin,et al.  Improved resolution and signal-to-noise ratio in laser-ultrasonics by SAFT processing. , 1998, Optics express.

[5]  Thomas Berer,et al.  Photoacoustic tomography using integrating line detectors , 2010 .

[6]  M. Haltmeier,et al.  Temporal back-projection algorithms for photoacoustic tomography with integrating line detectors , 2007 .

[7]  A. Bell.  On the production and reproduction of sound by light , 1880, American Journal of Science.

[8]  Lihong V. Wang.  Multiscale photoacoustic microscopy and computed tomography. , 2009, Nature photonics.

[9]  Kasper van Wijk,et al.  Multicomponent wavefield characterization with a novel scanning laser interferometer. , 2010, The Review of scientific instruments.

[10]  Lihong V. Wang,et al.  Photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , 2006 .

[11]  P. Burgholzer,et al.  Photoacoustic tomography using a fiber based Fabry-Perot interferometer as an integrating line detector and image reconstruction by model-based time reversal method , 2007, European Conference on Biomedical Optics.

[12]  Markus Haltmeier,et al.  Photoacoustic tomography using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as an acoustic line detector. , 2007, Applied optics.

[13]  H. Weber,et al.  Temporal backward projection of optoacoustic pressure transients using fourier transform methods. , 2001, Physics in medicine and biology.

[14]  Thomas Berer,et al.  Three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging using fiber-based line detectors. , 2010, Journal of biomedical optics.

[15]  Sridhar Krishnaswamy,et al.  Heterodyne interferometer with two‐wave mixing in photorefractive crystals for ultrasound detection on rough surfaces , 1996 .

[16]  J. Laufer,et al.  In vivo high-resolution 3D photoacoustic imaging of superficial vascular anatomy , 2009, Physics in medicine and biology.