Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) systems based on Fabry-Perot (FP) sensors provide high-resolution images limited by the system’s sensitivity. The sensitivity is limited by the optical Q-factor of the FP cavity (i.e., the optical confinement of the interrogation laser beam in the FP cavity). In existing systems, a focused Gaussian beam is used to interrogate the sensor. While providing a small acoustic element required for high-resolution imaging, this interrogation beam naturally diverges inside the FP cavity, leading to the current sensitivity limit. To break this limit, a new approach of interrogating the FP sensor using a Bessel beam is investigated. The Noise Equivalent Pressure (NEP) and both axial and lateral PAT resolutions using Bessel beam interrogation were quantified. Bessel beam interrogation provided lower NEP, similar axial resolution, but lower lateral resolution. Thus, Bessel beam might be an alternative interrogation scheme for deep PAT imaging as high sensitivity is needed and the lateral resolution is limited by the aperture of the PAT system.
Fabry-Perot (FP) ultrasound sensors are widely used for Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT), affording high resolution (<100 μm) images, with a penetration depth of about 1 cm, limited by system's sensitivity. The sensitivity is, in turn, limited by the shape of the Gaussian beam typically used to interrogate the FP sensor, which is not well "confined" inside the FP cavity. To overcome this limitation, a novel PAT system employing Bessel beam to interrogate the FP sensor was prototyped. Unlike Gaussian beams, Bessel beams are well confined in the FP cavity, increasing the system's sensitivity by multiple orders of magnitude, paving the way to multi-centimetre clinical PAT imaging with high resolution
Fabry-Pérot etalon-based ultrasound detectors are typically interrogated with a focused Gaussian beam in order to achieve a desired acoustic element size. However, tightly focused Gaussian beams lead to beam ‘walk-off’ within the etalon cavity which reduces sensitivity. In previous work, the planar geometry of the Fabry-Pérot etalon has been replaced by a curved geometry matched to the interrogation beam geometry, thus preventing walk-off. In this work we instead propose using propagation invariant Bessel beams, thus matching the beam geometry to that of the planar etalon geometry, to reduce beam walk-off and increase sensitivity. Increased sensitivity may extend the imaging depth of Fabry-Pérot ultrasound detection systems and may thus enable photoacoustic imaging to access a range of deep tissue imaging applications.
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