Optical microscopy remains a major workhorse in biological discovery despite the fact that light scattering limits its applicability to depths of ∼ 1 mm in scattering tissues. Optoacoustic imaging has been shown to overcome this barrier by resolving optical absorption with microscopic resolution in significantly deeper regions. Yet, the time domain is paramount for the observation of biological dynamics in living systems that exhibit fast motion. Commonly, acquisition of microscopy data involves raster scanning across the imaged volume, which significantly limits temporal resolution in 3D. To overcome these limitations, we have devised a fast optoacoustic micro-tomography (OMT) approach based on simultaneous acquisition of 3D image data with a high-density hemispherical ultrasound array having effective detection bandwidth around 25 MHz. We performed experiments by imaging tissue-mimicking phantoms and zebrafish larvae, demonstrating that OMT can provide nearly cellular resolution and imaging speed of 100 volumetric frames per second. As opposed to other optical microscopy techniques, OMT is a hybrid method that resolves optical absorption contrast acoustically using unfocused light excitation. Thus, no penetration barriers are imposed by light scattering in deep tissues, suggesting it as a powerful approach for multi-scale functional and molecular imaging applications.
Model organisms such as zebrafish play an important role for developmental biologists and experimental geneticists. Still, as they grow into their post-embryonic stage of development it becomes more and more difficult to image them because of high light scattering inside biological tissue. Optoacoustic mesoscopy based on spherically focused, high frequency, ultrasound detectors offers an alternative, where it relies on the focusing capabilities of the ultrasound detectors in generating the image rather than on the focusing of light. Nonetheless, because of the limited numerical aperture the resolution is not isotropic, and many structures, especially elongated ones, such as blood vessels and other organs, are either invisible, or not clearly identifiable on the final image. Herein, based on high frequency ultrasound detectors at 100 MHz and 50 MHz we introduce multi orientation (view) optoacoustic mesoscopy. We collect a rich amount of signals from multiple directions and combine them using a weighted sum in the Fourier domain and a Wiener deconvolution into a single high resolution three-dimensional image. The new system achieves isotropic resolutions on the order of 10 μm in-plane, 40 μm axially, and SNR enhancement of 15 dB compared to the single orientation case. To showcase the system we imaged a juvenile zebrafish ex vivo, which is too large to image using optical microscopic techniques, the reconstructed images show unprecedented performance in terms of SNR, resolution, and clarity of the observed structures. Using the system we see the inner organs of the zebrafish, the pigmentation, and the vessels with unprecedented clarity.
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