All-reflective ring illumination system for photoacoustic tomography

Given that breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in the United States, it is necessary to continue improving the sensitivity and specificity of breast imaging systems that diagnose breast lesions. Photoacoustic (PA) imaging can provide functional information during in vivo studies and can augment the structural information provided by ultrasound (US) imaging. A full-ring, all-reflective, illumination system for photoacoustic tomography (PAT) coupled to a full-ring US receiver is developed and tested. The US/PA tomography system utilizes a cone mirror and conical reflectors to optimize light delivery for PAT imaging and has the potential to image objects that are placed within the ring US transducer. The conical reflector used in this system distributes the laser energy over a circular cross-sectional area, thereby reducing the overall fluence. This, in turn, allows the operator to increase the laser energy achieving better cross-sectional penetration depth. A proof-of-concept design utilizing a single cone mirror and a parabolic reflector is used for imaging cylindrical phantoms with light-absorbing objects. For the given phantoms, it has been shown that there was no restriction in imaging a given targeted cross-sectional area irrespective of vertical depth, demonstrating the potential of mirror-based, ring-illuminated PAT system. In addition, the all-reflective ring illumination method shows a uniform PA signal across the scanned cross-sectional area.