Free-hand 3d optoacoustic imaging of vasculature

Optoacoustic techniques allow imaging of tissue structures with optical contrast and acoustical resolution. This modality is ideal for visualization of blood vessels since haemoglobin is one of the best-absorbing tissue chromophores. It therefore can provide vasculature images with much higher contrast than pure ultrasound. If compared with standard techniques for blood imaging such as Doppler ultrasound, the major advantage of optoacoustic imaging is scalability allowing a resolution down to several µm. The availability of biologically conjugated nanoparticles further allows using this technique for molecular imaging where a precise localization of the abundance of biomolecules is desired in 2d and 3d. The strong spectral dependence of blood absorption properties will potentially allow multispectral optoacoustics for investigation of oxygenation level. While the location and size of vessels can be obtained with optoacoustic b-scans, the understanding of the network requires 3d data. We propose the use of a stereo-camera in order to track the transducer position for fast and convenient acquisition of 3d optoacoustic data.