Adjustable Handheld Probe Design for Photoacoustic Imaging:Experimental Validation.

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is an emerging imaging technique that combines light illumination and ultrasound detection. Conventional design of PA probe usually combines light and sound in a straightforward way without adjustable capability. In this paper, we propose a new PA imaging system based on light-adjustable handheld probe. The proposed PA imaging system includes a control unit that can adaptively find the light illumination pattern for the PA signal generation with optimized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Compared with traditional design of PA probe, our proposed apparatus enables the following advantages: (1) The system can automatically find the specific position parameters of the illumination scheme, and obtain the PA signal with optimized SNR by implementing a scanning process. (2) The proposed apparatus can be fully automatic and adaptive by electronic control. By scanning the sample, it can automatically obtain the optimized light exposure position. (3) Spot size and distance are adjustable. Both simulation and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system to have great potential in biomedical imaging with versatile configurations.