Photoacoustic elastic oscillation and characterization

Photoacoustic imaging and sensing have been studied extensively to probe the optical absorption of biological tissue in multiple scales ranging from large organs to small molecules. However, its elastic oscillation characterization is rarely studied and has been an untapped area to be explored. In literature, photoacoustic signal induced by pulsed laser is commonly modelled as a bipolar "N-shape" pulse from an optical absorber. In this paper, the photoacoustic damped oscillation is predicted and modelled by an equivalent mass-spring system by treating the optical absorber as an elastic oscillator. The photoacoustic simulation incorporating the proposed oscillation model shows better agreement with the measured signal from an elastic phantom, than conventional photoacoustic simulation model. More interestingly, the photoacoustic damping oscillation effect could potentially be a useful characterization approach to evaluate biological tissue's mechanical properties in terms of relaxation time, peak number and ratio beyond optical absorption only, which is experimentally demonstrated in this paper. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America