Simultaneous photoacoustic imaging technique using an acoustic imaging lens

A simultaneous photoacoustic (PA) tomography imaging technique in multilayer samples was developed. Instead of using the PA image reconstruction methods on the basis of complex algorithms, obtaining a two-dimensional PA image in real time is available by using an acoustic lens that has the ability of parallel imaging. The imaging system can acquire the complete PA signals of high signal-to-noise ratio from all the object planes by utilizing the advantages of the acoustic lens with long focal depth and a fast data acquisition system with a high sampling rate. With the time-resolved technique, the PA signals from different object planes can be distinguished and then the high optical contrast multilayer PA images can be reconstructed simultaneously without any algorithms. The experimental results show that the reconstructed sections agree well with the original samples. (C) 2009 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [DOI: 10.1117/1.3155525]