University of Colorado

Donald Conkey

Rafael Piestun

Jacob D Dove

Todd William Murray

Antonio Miguel Caravaca-Aguirre

Hengyi Ju

Systems and methods are disclosed to enhance three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging behind, through, or inside a scattering material. Some embodiments can increase the optical fluence in an ultrasound transducer focus and/or enhance the optical intensity using wavefront shaping before the scatterer. The photoacoustic signal induced by an object placed behind the scattering medium can serve as feedback to optimize the wavefront, enabling one order of magnitude enhancement of the photoacoustic amplitude. Using the enhanced optical intensity, the object can be scanned in two dimensions and/or a spot can be scanned by re-optimizing the wavefront before post-processing of the data to reconstruct the image. The temporal photoacoustic signal provides information to reconstruct the third-dimensional information.

Imaging through scattering media with high signal to noise ratio and resolution

A wavefront is optimized imaging a sample. A binary off-axis hologram is encoded by selective adoption of states for each mirror of a deformable mirror device, which is illuminated with an incident beam of light. A single diffraction order that has encoded phase-mask information is selected from light reflected from the deformable mirror device and focused onto the sample. Light scattered from the sample is directed to a photodetector. A transmission matrix through the sample is calculated from light received by the photodetector.

Growing community of inventors

Boulder, CO, United States of America

Donald Conkey