Flexible fiber-laser ultrasound sensor for multiscale photoacoustic imaging

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a noninvasive biomedical imaging technology capable of multiscale imaging of biological samples from organs down to cells. Multiscale PAI requires different ultrasound transducers that are flat or focused because the current widely-used piezoelectric transducers are rigid and lack the flexibility to tune their spatial ultrasound responses. Inspired by the rapidly-developing flexible photonics, we exploited the inherent flexibility and low-loss features of optical fibers to develop a flexible fiber-laser ultrasound sensor (FUS) for multiscale PAI. By simply bending the fiber laser from straight to curved geometry, the spatial ultrasound response of the FUS can be tuned for both wide-view optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy at optical diffraction-limited depth (~1 mm) and photoacoustic computed tomography at optical dissipation-limited depth of several centimeters. A radio-frequency demodulation was employed to get the readout of the beat frequency variation of two orthogonal polarization modes in the FUS output, which ensures low-noise and stable ultrasound detection. Compared to traditional piezoelectrical transducers with fixed ultrasound responses once manufactured, the flexible FUS provides the freedom to design multiscale PAI modalities including wearable microscope, intravascular endoscopy, and portable tomography system, which is attractive to fundamental biological/medical studies and clinical applications.