Parallel acoustic delay lines for photoacoustic tomography

Achieving real-time photoacoustic (PA) tomography typically requires massive ultrasound transducer arrays and data acquisition (DAQ) electronics to receive PA waves simultaneously. In this paper, we report the first demonstration of a photoacoustic tomography (PAT) system using optical fiber-based parallel acoustic delay lines (PADLs). By employing PADLs to introduce specific time delays, the PA signals (on the order of a few micro seconds) can be forced to arrive at the ultrasonic transducers at different times. As a result, time-delayed PA signals in multiple channels can be ultimately received and processed in a serial manner with a single-element transducer, followed by single‐channel DAQ electronics. Our results show that an optically absorbing target in an optically scattering medium can be photoacoustically imaged using the newly developed PADL-based PAT system. Potentially, this approach could be adopted to significantly reduce the complexity and cost of ultrasonic array receiver systems.

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