Integrating photoacoustic microscopy with other imaging technologies for multimodal imaging

Area of Science:

• Biomedical optics
• Microscopy
• Medical imaging

Background:

• Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) is a hybrid optical imaging technology.
• It visualizes optical absorption contrasts in biological tissues.
• PAM achieves high-resolution anatomical and functional imaging due to low acoustic scattering.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review multimodal photoacoustic microscopy imaging systems.
• To discuss technologies for intrinsically and precisely registered multimodal images.
• To cover advancements in penta-modal PAM with dynamic focusing.

Main Methods:

• Sharing ultrasonic transducers or light sources among different imaging modalities.
• Integrating optical coherence tomography (OCT) with PAM.
• Utilizing a novel dynamic focusing technique enabled by OCT contour scan.

Main Results:

• Multimodal PAM systems provide complementary contrast mechanisms.
• Shared components ensure precise image registration in multimodal systems.
• A penta-modal PAM system demonstrates advanced imaging capabilities.

Conclusions:

• Multimodal photoacoustic microscopy enhances biological tissue analysis.
• Precise image registration is achievable through shared components.
• Novel techniques like dynamic focusing improve PAM system performance.