Efficient combination of multiple high power semiconductor laser sources for photoacoustic signal generation in biomedical phantoms

There is increasing interest in photoacoustic techniques for non-invasive soft tissue investigation, this in part is due to the successful in vivo trials and investigation using biomedical soft tissue phantoms. The work presented in this paper focuses on the construction and calibration of a semiconductor laser system for the generation of high power optical pulses required for photoacoustic signal generation in biomedical phantoms. Such energy levels are achieved using combination of commercial semiconductor laser sources. Results presented in this paper show that this combination process is effective and an efficient means to obtain photoacoustic signals in biomedical samples.