Scattering photoacoustic method in measurement of weakly-absorbing turbid suspensions

Conventional photoacoustic techniques in composition determination and biomedical diagnose and imaging are based on the optical absorption in target substance or objects from which the photons to be scattered are not concerned. It is obvious that the intensities of scattered lights closely relate to the property of the interrogated substance, therefore measuring the signals produced by them can give rise to more information of the substance. Based on this idea, a novel method entitled scattering photoacoustic (SPA) method is put forward to study weak absorption suspensions with highly scattering. In this method, a near infrared pulse laser irradiates the studied object which contacts with external absorbers, resulting the generation of a few photoacoustic signals; one is produced in the studied object as conventional case, others are in external absorbers which are produced by the scattered photons. All these signals are successively received by a piezoelectric detector with short damping period. Analyzing these signals is capable of determining reduced scattered coefficient and absorption coefficient, as well as acoustic attenuation of studied suspensions. Some measurement results in intralipid and fibre (paper pulp) suspensions are given rise to in the end.