Thermal-tagging photoacoustic remote sensing flowmetry

Ultrasound coupling is one of the critical challenges for traditional photoacoustic (or optoacoustic) microscopy (PAM) techniques transferred to the clinical examination of chronic wounds and open tissues. A promising alternative potential solution for breaking the limitation of ultrasound coupling in PAM is photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS), which implements all-optical non-interferometric photoacoustic measurements. Functional imaging of PARS microscopy was demonstrated from the aspects of histopathology and oxygen metabolism, while its performance in hemodynamic quantification remains unexplored. In this Letter, we present an all-optical thermal-tagging flowmetry approach for PARS microscopy and demonstrate it with comprehensive mathematical modeling and ex vivo and in vivo experimental validations. Experimental results demonstrated that the detectable range of the blood flow rate was from 0 to 12 mm/s with a high accuracy (measurement error:±1.2%) at 10-kHz laser pulse repetition rate. The proposed all-optical thermal-tagging flowmetry offers an effective alternative approach for PARS microscopy realizing non-contact dye-free hemodynamic imaging.