Photoacoustic/optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Preliminary work describing the multimodal combination of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and photoacoustic (PA) imaging has demonstrated the potential for these two techniques to nicely complement each other, providing access to information about tissue scattering and absorption, respectively. In practice, however, there exist limitations to combining OCT and PA using conventional methods for PA signal acquisition, and thus, there have been relatively few successful demonstrations of a combined approach. Of the multimodal systems that have been presented, one that may offer a solution for translation to clinical use employs an all-optical ultrasonic detection technique based on a Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI)–based sensor. This chapter chronicles the efforts towards combining PA imaging and OCT, with a focus on a PA tomography (PAT)/OCT system that uses this FPI sensor for all-optical detection