Optical clearing-aided photoacoustic microscopy with enhanced resolution and imaging depth.

Due to strong light scattering in tissue, both the spatial resolution and maximum penetration depth of optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) deteriorate sharply with depth. To reduce tissue scattering, we propose to use glycerol as an optical clearing agent in OR-PAM. Our results show that the imaging performance of OR-PAM can be greatly enhanced by optical clearing both in vitro and in vivo.