Miniature intravascular photoacoustic endoscopy with coaxial excitation and detection

Lin, R., Zhang, Q., Lv, S., Zhang, J., Wang, X., Shi, D., Gong, X. and Lam, K. H. (2023) Miniature intravascular photoacoustic endoscopy with coaxial excitation and detection. Journal of Biophotonics, 16(4), e202200269. (doi: 10.1002/jbio.202200269) (PMID:36510391)

Abstract

Recent research pointed out that the degree of inflammation in the adventitia could correlate with the severity of atherosclerotic plaques. Intravascular photoacoustic endoscopy can provide the information of arterial morphology and plaque composition, and even detecting the inflammation. However, most reported work used a non-coaxial configuration for the photoacoustic catheter design, which formed a limited light-sound overlap area for imaging so as to miss the adventitia information. Here we developed a novel 0.9 mm-diameter intravascular photoacoustic catheter with coaxial excitation and detection to resolve the aforementioned issue. A miniature hollow ultrasound transducer with a 0.18 mm-diameter orifice in the center was successfully fabricated. To show the significance and merits of our design, phantom and ex vivo imaging experiments were conducted on both coaxial and non-coaxial catheters for comparison. The results demonstrated that the coaxial catheter exhibited much better photoacoustic/ultrasound imaging performance from the intima to the adventitia.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was partially supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFC0116300); National Natural Science Foundation of China (62005306, 61975226); the CAS Key Laboratory of Health Informatics (2011DP173015); Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Optical Imaging Technology (2020B121201010); Hong Kong Research Impact Fund (R5029-19); Hong Kong Research Grants Council (15220920); Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee (ZDSY20130401165820357, JCYJ20200109114610201).
• Keywords: Coaxial catheter, ex-vivo, intravascular, photoacoustic endoscopy.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Lam, Dr Koko
• Authors: Lin, R., Zhang, Q., Lv, S., Zhang, J., Wang, X., Shi, D., Gong, X., and Lam, K. H.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy
• Journal Name: Journal of Biophotonics
• Publisher: Wiley
• ISSN: 1864-063X
• ISSN (Online): 1864-0648
• Published Online: 12 December 2022
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Journal of Biophotonics 16(4): e202200269
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License