Review of Pulsation Signal Detection and Applications in Dynamic Photoacoustic Imaging

Area of Science:

• Biomedical optics
• Medical imaging
• Physiological monitoring

Background:

• Pulsatile signal detection is crucial for monitoring heart rate and blood oxygen saturation in clinical and personal settings.
• Photoplethysmography (PPG) offers non-invasive optical measurement but has limited spatial resolution (approx. 2 mm).
• Ultrasound (US) provides deep detection but suffers from low contrast and artifacts, detecting indirect pulsations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review advancements in photoacoustic (PA) imaging for pulsatile signal monitoring.
• To compare PA imaging's capabilities against optical and ultrasonic approaches.
• To highlight PA imaging's potential for deep and accurate physiological measurements.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on photoacoustic pulsatile signal monitoring.
• Analysis of technical advancements in PA imaging for physiological sensing.
• Comparative assessment of PA imaging with PPG and US techniques.

Main Results:

• Photoacoustic imaging precisely measures pulsatile signals from blood vessels at depths over 10 mm.
• PA imaging demonstrates potential for accurate blood oxygen saturation recording with high spatial and temporal resolution.
• PA imaging overcomes limitations of PPG and US in deep tissue pulsatile signal detection.

Conclusions:

• Photoacoustic imaging represents a significant advancement in non-invasive physiological monitoring.
• PA imaging offers superior performance for deep tissue pulsatile signal detection compared to optical and ultrasound methods.
• PA imaging holds promise for enhanced clinical and personal health monitoring applications.