1E-3 Tomographic Photoacoustic Imaging Using Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) Technology

Photoacoustic imaging is performed using a two-dimensional array of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) with integrated front-end electronics. Advantages of CMUT technology for photoacoustic imaging include the ease of integration with electronics, ability to fabricate large arrays with arbitrary geometries, wide-bandwidth arrays and high-frequency arrays. One of the goals of this research is to build a complete photoacoustic imaging system with an inward-looking cylindrical array that can enclose the target. As steps toward this goal two experiments are presented in this paper - photoacoustic imaging with planar scanning of the target and photoacoustic imaging with circular scanning of the target. Pulse-echo and photoacoustic images are presented. Image resolution and sensitivity of the setup are discussed and photoacoustic images of chicken tissue ablation are shown