A Transparent Ultrasound Array for Real-Time Optical, Ultrasound, and Photoacoustic Imaging
Haoyang Chen,
Sumit Agrawal,
Mohamed Osman,
Josiah Minotto,
Shubham Mirg,
Jinyun Liu,
Ajay Dangi,
Quyen Tran,
Thomas Jackson,
Sri-Rajasekhar Kothapalli
Affiliations
Haoyang Chen
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Sumit Agrawal
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Mohamed Osman
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Josiah Minotto
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Shubham Mirg
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Jinyun Liu
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Ajay Dangi
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Quyen Tran
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Thomas Jackson
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Sri-Rajasekhar Kothapalli
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA; Penn State Cancer Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, Hershey, PA 17033, USA; Graduate Program in Acoustics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Objective and Impact Statement. Simultaneous imaging of ultrasound and optical contrasts can help map structural, functional, and molecular biomarkers inside living subjects with high spatial resolution. There is a need to develop a platform to facilitate this multimodal imaging capability to improve diagnostic sensitivity and specificity. Introduction. Currently, combining ultrasound, photoacoustic, and optical imaging modalities is challenging because conventional ultrasound transducer arrays are optically opaque. As a result, complex geometries are used to coalign both optical and ultrasound waves in the same field of view. Methods. One elegant solution is to make the ultrasound transducer transparent to light. Here, we demonstrate a novel transparent ultrasound transducer (TUT) linear array fabricated using a transparent lithium niobate piezoelectric material for real-time multimodal imaging. Results. The TUT-array consists of 64 elements and centered at ~6 MHz frequency. We demonstrate a quad-mode ultrasound, Doppler ultrasound, photoacoustic, and fluorescence imaging in real-time using the TUT-array directly coupled to the tissue mimicking phantoms. Conclusion. The TUT-array successfully showed a multimodal imaging capability and has potential applications in diagnosing cancer, neurological, and vascular diseases, including image-guided endoscopy and wearable imaging.
