Photoacoustic tomography imaging system based on digital B-mode ultrasound diagnosis equipment.

A photoacoustic tomography imaging system with B-mode digital ultrasound diagnosis equipment was designed, fabricated, and tested for biomedical imaging. The system for biomedical diagnostics was designed with four parts consisting of an irradiating source, digital B-mode ultrasound diagnostic equipment with a liner transducer array, data acquisition and transmission system, and rotation devices for imaging scanning. Multielement phase-controlled focus technique was applied to reduce the data-acquisition time and enhance signal-to-noise ratio. Under the self-designed working sequence, data-acquisition time of an image can be reduced to 12 s. A series of experiments were performed to estimate the imaging quality of the system. The lateral and elevational resolutions of the system were detected to be 0.25 and 1.4 mm, respectively. The results show that the system has the feasibility to be used as a medical imaging method, and it may provide a new rapid and noninvasive imaging modality for clinical applications.