Optoacoustic endoscopy: System development and application.

In this work, two dedicated endoscopy systems are developed, and the imaging performance is characterized on phantoms and biological samples. Besides, optoacoustic endoscopy probes based on different scanning configurations, illumination settings and ultrasound transducers are built and analyzed regarding their influence on the endoscopic imaging performance. In addition to the technical development of the instrumentation, the necessary detection bandwidth for visualizing esophagus morphology and selecting ultrasound transducers for future optoacoustic endoscopy of the esophagus is studied. Finally, excised esophageal samples from pigs and human are measured to test the tissue imaging capability of the developed endoscopy systems, showing great clinical potential of esophagus imaging