Fiber endface photoacoustic generator for quantitative photoacoustic tomography

Opt Lett. 2021 Jun 1;46(11):2706-2709. doi: 10.1364/OL.426033.

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel fiber endface photoacoustic (PA) generator using infrared (IR) 144 laser dye dispersed within an ultraviolet adhesive. The generator provides a wide acoustic bandwidth in the transducer frequency range of 2-7 MHz, high thermal conversion efficiency (${\gt}90\%$), good PA signal controllability (well-controlled IR 144 concentration), and high feasibility (simple procedures). Through a series of experimental validations, we show that this fiber-based endface PA generator can be a useful tool for a broad range of biomedical applications such as calibrating the local absorption coefficient of biological tissue for quantitative PA tomography.