An integrated functional ultrasound (fUS) and photoacoustic (PA) imaging modality is favorable for obtaining multiparametric functional information of deep vasculature. fUS maps blood volume changes of microvasculature using power Doppler frames generated from multiple plane-wave angles with high spatiotemporal resolution, while PA complements vascular oxygen saturation images. In this work, we demonstrated that fUS, ultrasound, and PA imaging can be performed in real-time with a single ultrasound transducer probe. For this, we attached a custom-designed fiber optic illuminator to the fUS probe to optimally deliver light for deep tissue PA imaging. Validation studies on blood flow phantoms and in vivo finger images with a compact imaging head show reduced motion artifacts and ease out the acoustic coupling challenges, making it suitable for multimodal US, fUS and PA imaging of microvasculature.
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