Multi-element synthetic aperture focusing photoacoustic imaging system with real-time digital beamformer technique

Photoacoustic imaging takes the merits of simultaneous high optical contrast and low acoustical scattering, and has been proven to be a potential tool for noninvasive diagnosis of cancer tumors in an early stage. An integrated prototype multi-element synthetic aperture focusing photoacoustic imaging system using real-time digital beamformer (96 scan lines of each frame image) is designed, fabricated and tested. The combined system with multi-channel signal acquisition and real-time digital beam-formation module implements real-time dynamic receiving focus and apodization technique to process the photoacoustic signal, which is captured by a 128-element linear ultrasonic transducer array. The data acquisition and synthesis time can be accelerated in less than 4 s of each view without data average. The in vivo experiments were performed with a clear view of the blood vessels network of mouse tumor. The results demonstrate that the multi-element synthetic aperture focusing photoacoustic imaging system with real-time digital beamformer technique has the potential in the practical fast photoacoustic imaging for clinical diagnosis