light-emitting diode based photoacoustic imaging system

Purpose: a photoacoustic imaging (pai) as a non-invasive hybrid imaging modality has the potential to be used in a wide range of pre-clinical and clinical applications. there are different optical excitation sources that affect the performance of pai systems. our goal is proving the capability of the light-emitting diode (led) based pai system for imaging of objects in different depths.materials and methods: in this study the full width of half maximum (fwhm) and contrast to noise ratio (cnr) of led-based pai system is evaluated using agar, and poly-vinyl alcohol cryogel (pva-c) phantoms.results: the results show that axial and lateral fwhm of the photoacoustic image in agar phantom 1%, are 0.59 and 1.16 mm, respectively. it is capable of distinguishing objects about 250 μm. furthermore, one of the main improvements of photoacoustic images is achieved by proposed led-based system that is a 26% higher cnr versus the ultrasound images.conclusion: therefore, the provided technical characteristics in this study have made designed led-based pai system as a suitable tool for preclinical and clinical imaging.