Highly sensitive microfiber ultrasound sensor for photoacoustic imaging

An ultrasound wave is a kind of acoustic signal with a frequency greater than 20 kHz, which is widely used in diverse fields such as medical imaging diagnosis, nondestructive testing and resource exploration. A variety of ultrasound sensors have been developed for ultrasound detection. Particularly for photoacoustic imaging, specialized ultrasound sensors with high sensitivity, small size, and broad bandwidth are needed. However, achieving such sensor performance still poses a great challenge to the current state-of-the-art in ultrasound sensor technology. A recent work published in Opto-Electronic Advances (DOI: 10.29026/oea.2022.200076) proposes a microfiber-based ultrasound sensor that breaks the limitations of existing ultrasound sensors. Benefiting from the large evanescent field characteristic of microfiber, combined with the coherent detection technology, the proposed sensor realized highly sensitive ultrasound detection and demonstrated excellent performance in high-resolution photoacoustic imaging. The highly sensitive and miniaturized microfiber ultrasound sensor provides a competitive alternative for various applications, such as endoscopic photoacoustic imaging of the intestinal tract and blood vessels in animals.