Non-telecentric photoacoustic microscopy for multi-scale imaging.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Microscopy
• Photoacoustics

Background:

• Optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) provides high-contrast biological tissue imaging.
• Existing OR-PAM systems face a trade-off between spatial resolution and field of view (FOV).
• This limitation hinders simultaneous large-scale and high-resolution imaging within a single system.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel non-telecentric OR-PAM (nTC-PAM) system.
• To enable flexible adaptation of FOV and spatial resolution for multi-scale biological imaging.
• To overcome the inherent resolution-FOV compromise in conventional OR-PAM.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a non-telecentric optical design for OR-PAM.
• Demonstration of efficient FOV and spatial resolution adaptation.
• Utilizing absorption contrast for imaging biological tissues.

Main Results:

• The nTC-PAM system achieved adaptable FOV and spatial resolution.
• The system demonstrated large-scale imaging capabilities, surpassing the nominal FOV of the objective with minimal resolution loss.
• Multi-scale imaging was successfully performed on a leaf phantom, mouse ear, and mouse cortex.

Conclusions:

• The nTC-PAM system effectively addresses the multi-scale imaging requirements in biological research.
• This technology allows for seamless switching between large FOV and high-resolution imaging.
• nTC-PAM is suitable for applications ranging from whole-brain imaging to detailed microvascular visualization.