Three-dimensional diffractive acoustic tomography
Luca Menozzi, Tri Vu, Aidan J. Canning, Harshal Rawtani, Carlos Taboada, Marie Elise Abi Antoun, Chenshuo Ma, Jesse Delia, Van Tu Nguyen, Soon‐Woo Cho, Jianing Chen, Theresa Charity, Yirui Xu, Phuong Hoang Tran, Jun Xia, Gregory M. Palmer, Tuan Vo‐Dinh, Liping Feng, Junjie Yao
Abstract
Acoustically probing biological tissues with light or sound, photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging can provide anatomical, functional, and/or molecular information at depths far beyond the optical diffusion limit. However, most photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging systems rely on linear-array transducers with elevational focusing and are limited to two-dimensional imaging with anisotropic resolutions. Here, we present three-dimensional diffractive acoustic tomography (3D-DAT), which uses an off-the-shelf linear-array transducer with single-slit acoustic diffraction. Without jeopardizing its accessibility by general users, 3D-DAT has achieved simultaneous 3D photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging with optimal imaging performance in deep tissues, providing near-isotropic resolutions, high imaging speed, and a large field-of-view, as well as enhanced quantitative accuracy and detection sensitivity. Moreover, powered by the fast focal line volumetric reconstruction, 3D-DAT has achieved 50-fold faster reconstruction times than traditional photoacoustic imaging reconstruction. Using 3D-DAT on small animal models, we mapped the distribution of the biliverdin-binding serpin complex in glassfrogs, tracked gold nanoparticle accumulation in a mouse tumor model, imaged genetically-encoded photoswitchable tumors, and investigated polyfluoroalkyl substances exposure on developing embryos. With its enhanced imaging performance and high accessibility, 3D-DAT may find broad applications in fundamental life sciences and biomedical research.