Development of Low-Cost Fast Photoacoustic Computed Tomography: System Characterization and Phantom Study

Abstract

A low-cost Photoacoustic Computed Tomography (PACT) system consisting of 16 single-element transducers has been developed. Our design proposes a fast rotating mechanism of 360o rotation around the imaging target, generating comparable images to those produced by large-number-element (e.g., 512, 1024, etc.) ring-array PACT systems. The 2D images with a temporal resolution of 1.5 s and a spatial resolution of 240 µm were achieved. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated by imaging complex phantom. The purpose of the proposed development is to provide researchers a low-cost alternative 2D photoacoustic computed tomography system with comparable resolution to the current high performance expensive ring-array PACT systems.

Development of a Stationary 3D Photoacoustic Imaging System Using Sparse Single-Element Transducers: Phantom Study

“…Photoacoustic imaging has shown great promise in preclinical studies [11,15,24,[61][62][63][64][65][66]. It has also shown great potential for clinical translatability.…”

“…This thermal expansion causes a localized pressure rise, which propagates from the sample to be imaged by an ultrasound transducer (or an array of ultrasound transducers), similar to traditional ultrasound detection. Finally, depending on the configuration of As for light illumination, an overhead illumination using a single large optical fiber or a full-field illumination using a fiber bundle, have been studied [15,36,37]. We have previously shown in [38,39] that full-field illumination provides a more homogenous and deeper illumination than overhead illumination; using full-field illumination, we have access to a larger illumination area, and according to the literature [40], the larger the area of illumination, the more light we can couple to the tissue.…”

Development of a Punch-O-Meter for Sport Karate Training

“…The combination of an imaging system that has depth sectioning and functional imaging capabilities [23][24][25][26][27] with what is proposed here would enable us to study the blood flow change and structural damage at the point of contact.…”

The Acquisition Rate and Soundness of a Low-Cost Data Acquisition System (LC-DAQ) for High Frequency Applications

“…For example, in [11], a low-cost system was developed to monitor a bearing in a mechanical system through a MEMS accelerometer, transmitting the information to a computer for further processing in Matlab. Other applications have used multipurpose equipment (such as National Instuments DAQ) [12] to lower the cost of high dynamics (and higher priced proprietary systems), such as photoacoustic computed tomography [13].…”