Low-cost high-power light emitting diodes for photoacoustic imaging

We present a photoacoustic imaging system based on a low-cost high-power miniature light emitting diode (LED), which has the capability of in vivo mapping vasculature networks in biological tissue. Phantoms were used to demonstrate the feasibility of the system, while in vivo imaging the vasculature of mouse ear shows that LED-based photoacoustic imaging (LED-PAI) could have great potential for label-free biomedical imaging applications, overcoming the practical limitations of the use of bulky and expensive pulsed lasers.