Recent Progress on Photoacoustic Imaging Enhanced with Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Technologies

Abstract

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a new biomedical imaging technology currently in the spotlight providing a hybrid contrast mechanism and excellent spatial resolution in the biological tissues. It has been extensively studied for preclinical and clinical applications taking advantage of its ability to provide anatomical and functional information of live bodies noninvasively. Recently, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies, particularly actuators and sensors, have contributed to improving the PAI system performance, further expanding the research fields. This review introduces cutting-edge MEMS technologies for PAI and summarizes the recent advances of scanning mirrors and detectors in MEMS.

Keywords

• photoacoustic imaging
• microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)
• MEMS scanning mirror
• micromachined US transducer
• microring resonator
• acoustic delay line