Light-Emitting Diode Based Photoacoustic Imaging System

A Photoacoustic Imaging (PAI) as a non-invasive hybrid imaging modality has the potential to be used in a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications. There are different optical excitation sources that affect the performance of PAI systems. Our goal is proving the capability of the Light-Emitting Diode (LED) based PAI system for imaging of objects in different depths.

In this study the Full Width of Half Maximum (FWHM) and Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) of LED-based PAI system is evaluated using agar, and Poly-Vinyl Alcohol Cryogel (PVA-C) phantoms

The results show that axial and lateral FWHM of the photoacoustic image in agar phantom 1%, are 0.59 and 1.16 mm, respectively. It is capable of distinguishing objects about 250 µm. Furthermore, one of the main improvements of photoacoustic images is achieved by proposed LED-based system that is a 26% higher CNR versus the ultrasound images.

Therefore, the provided technical characteristics in this study have made designed LED-based PAI system as a suitable tool for preclinical and clinical imaging.