Programmable Acoustic Delay-Line Enabled Low-Cost Photoacoustic Tomography System

Area of Science:

• Biomedical imaging
• Acoustic engineering
• Optical physics

Background:

• Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) offers high optical contrast and acoustic penetration for biomedical imaging.
• Current PAT systems face challenges with imaging speed and data acquisition costs, especially for high-fidelity image reconstruction.
• Single-channel scanning is slow, while array-based systems require expensive data acquisition modules.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a cost-effective solution for accelerating photoacoustic tomography (PAT) imaging speed.
• To reduce the data acquisition (DAQ) costs associated with array-based PAT systems.
• To introduce a programmable acoustic delay-line (PADL) module for enhanced PAT performance.

Main Methods:

• Designed a programmable acoustic delay-line (PADL) module for bidirectional acoustic-electrical signal conversion.
• Integrated ultrasound transmission for precise time delay control within the acoustic delay-line.
• Developed a programmable control unit to manage signal delays and merging of four PA signals into one output.
• Implemented signal recovery in the digital domain post-data acquisition.

Main Results:

• The PADL module successfully merged four photoacoustic (PA) signals into a single output, recoverable in the digital domain.
• Imaging experiments with phantom and in vivo human finger demonstrated the feasibility of the PADL module.
• The proposed module significantly reduces the overall cost of PAT systems.
• Imaging speed was accelerated, and DAQ costs were lowered.

Conclusions:

• The programmable acoustic delay-line (PADL) module is a feasible and effective solution for improving PAT systems.
• This technology addresses key limitations in PAT by reducing costs and increasing imaging speed.
• The PADL module holds significant potential for advancing biomedical imaging applications using photoacoustic tomography.