Interleave-sampled photoacoustic imaging: a doubled and equivalent sampling rate for high-frequency imaging

High-frequency photoacoustic (PA) imaging (>20 MHz) requires data acquisition (DAQ) with a commensurately high sampling rate, which leads to hardware challenges and increased costs. We report here a new, to the best of our knowledge, method-interleave-sampled PA imaging-that enables high-frequency imaging with a relatively low sampling rate, e.g., a 41.67-MHz sampling rate with a 30-MHz transducer. This method harnesses two acquisitions at a low sampling rate to effectively double the sampling rate which consequently reduces the frame rate by a factor of two. It modulates the delay of the light pulses and can thus be applied to any PA DAQ system. We perform both phantom and in vivo studies with a 30-MHz transducer. The results demonstrate that interleaved sampling at 41.67 MHz can capture high frequency information above 30 MHz but a conventional 41.67-MHz sampling rate cannot. The axial and lateral resolution are as high as 63 µm and 91 µm via interleaved sampling which are much higher than those of conventional 41.67-MHz sampling (130 µm and 136 µm).