Selection of laser pulse width for efficient generation of photoacoustic signals in liquid-filled thin capillary embedded in soft material

Abstract

To design an instrumentation system for evaluating contrast agents of photoacoustic imaging, the optimal pulse width of the excitation laser is discussed in this paper. A pulsed semiconductor laser with a moderate pulse width (15–129 ns) and low peak power (1 W) is adopted in the proposed system. Black ink is selected as the reference sample, which is filled in a glass capillary embedded in a soft phantom. Our aim is that the pulse width matches the acoustic resonance of the target and the center frequency of the receiving transducer (5 MHz) to obtain sufficient strength of the ultrasonic signal with minimal laser power. A series of experiments reveal a clear relationship between the laser pulse width and the maximal amplitude of the resonance mode. Acoustic resonance occurs inside the capillary whose frequencies can be precisely predicted as the radial eigen mode. The laser pulse width and concentration of the sample showed little influence on these resonance frequencies as expected. To efficiently utilize the signal enhancement effect due to the resonance, several resonance mode candidates are investigated and discussed. It then becomes clear that the second angular and zeroth radial order mode is useful for capillaries with sub-millimeter inner diameters. It was demonstrated that the concentration of samples had very limited influence on the frequencies. Finally, consideration based on two delayed attenuating vibrations is successfully conducted to explain the experimental results.