64-line-sensor array: fast imaging system for photoacoustic tomography

Three-dimensional photoacoustic tomography with line sensors, which integrate the pressure along their length, has shown to produce accurate images of small animals. To reduce the scanning time and to enable in vivo applications, a detection array is built consisting of 64 piezoelectric line sensors which are arranged on a semi-cylinder. When measuring line integrated pressure signals around the imaging object, the three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging problem is reduced to a set of two-dimensional reconstructions and the measurement setup requires only a single axis of rotation. The shape and size of the array were adapted to the given problem of biomedical imaging and small animal imaging in particular. The length and width of individual line elements had to be chosen in order to take advantage of the favorable line integrating properties, maintaining the requested resolution of the image. For data acquisition the signals from the 64 elements are amplified and multiplexed into a 32 channel digitizer. Single projection images are recorded with two laser pulses within 0.2 seconds, as determined by the laser pulse repetition rate of 10 Hz. Phantom experiments are used for characterization of the line-array. Compared to previous implementations with a single line sensor scanning around an object, with the developed array the data acquisition time can be reduced from about one hour to about one minute.