Optoacoustic Tomography of Large-Scale Phantoms with Controllable Optical Characteristics

摘要

Investigation of features of diagnostic methods is usually carried out with specially prepared biological samples in vitro or with artificially designed model tissue-like media - phantoms. This paper describes OA investigation of large-scale phantoms on the base of water-like media (such as gelatin) for simulation of large organs of human body. The necessity of accounting influence of limited band width on the magnitude of recorded OA signal has been investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Experimental calibration curves for used ultrasonic transducers have been obtained. Method of OA signal compression has been described. This method allows to achieve acceptable longitudinal resolution at high transducer sensitivity by means of using resonant probes instead of quasi-resonant ones. The 2D tomograms of large-scale phantoms containing optical inhomogeneities have been obtained by mechanical scanning system. Application of such method gives an opportunity to perform OA investigation of human organs with one-side access. This work was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Projects # 00-02-16600; 01-02-06416) and 6th competition-expertise of young scientists of Russian Academy of Sciences (Project #399).