Fast Photoacoustic Imaging of Blood Vessels Based on an Annular Transducer Array

We present a photoacoustic imaging system for rapid high-resolution photoacoustic imaging of blood vessels based on an annular transducer array. The annular transducer array consists of 256 elements arranged along a 300° arc with a 50-mm radius of curvature, using piezocomposite technology for high sensitivity and high signal-to-noise ratio. An eight-channel data acquisition system is applied to capture the photoacoustic signals using multiplexing and a limited-view filtered back projection algorithm is used to reconstruct the photoacoustic images. The experiments with phantom and blood vessels of a chicken are performed and clear photoacoustic images are obtained. The results demonstrate that the photoacoustic imaging system using the annular transducer array holds the potential application in monitoring neovascularization in tumor angiogenesis.