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Multifunctional Photoacoustic Tomography

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Abstract

Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is becoming a novel biomedical imaging modality which exploits conversion of laser energy to sound waves in optically irradiated tissue. PAT has several advantages: (1) it is safe because it uses ionizing radiation; (2) it overcomes the optical diffusion limitation in optically scattering media and consequently achieves high-resolution imaging with a range greater than one optical transport mean free path (i.e., ~1 mm) in tissues; (3) it provides uniquely high contrast of optical absorption unlike other optical imaging modalities which typically are sensitive to optical scattering, polarization, and fluorescence; (4) it can be easily adapted to existing conventional ultrasound imaging scanners; thus, PAT systems are relatively cheap and portable; and (5) it can provide information about multiple physiological parameters such as temperature, blood flow, total hemoglobin concentration, oxygen saturation of hemoglobin, metabolic rate, and conversion efficiency between radiative and nonradiative energy decays. This chapter will cover (1) basic principles, (2) various imaging systems, (3) morphological PAT, (4) functional PAT, and (5) molecular PAT.

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Lee, C., Park, S., Kim, J., Kim, C. (2014). Multifunctional Photoacoustic Tomography. In: Ho, AP., Kim, D., Somekh, M. (eds) Handbook of Photonics for Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6174-2_30-1

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