Introduction

Optoacoustic imaging is an imaging technique which relies on absorption of pulsed laser light by an absorbing object within a tissue to create pressure waves that are detected at the tissue surface.

• A tissue is exposed to a pulsed laser whose photons propagate to the object and are absorbed.
• Such absorption causes energy deposition to yield a slight increase in temperature.
• Such a temperature rise yields a slight expansion of the object.
• Such thermoelastic expansion increases the pressure within the object and launches a pressure wave into the surrounding medium.
• Such a pressure wave propagates to the tissue surface where an acoustic transducer detects the pressure yielding a time-resolved measurement.
• Such a time-resolved pressure is integrated versus time to yield the time-resolved velocity potential.
• Such a velocity potential is backprojected into the tissue to reconstruct the initial distribution of energy deposition.