Coherent photoacoustic-ultrasound correlation and imaging.

Both photoacoustics and ultrasound have been researched extensively but separately. In this letter, we report an initial study on the coherent correlation between pulsed photoacoustic wave and pulse-echo ultrasound wave. By illuminating an object with a pulsed laser and external ultrasound sequentially, both the endogenous photoacoustic wave and pulse-echo ultrasound wave are received and coherently correlated, demonstrating enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. Image contrast of the proposed coherent photoacoustic-ultrasound imaging is also demonstrated to be improved significantly on vessel-mimicking phantom, due to fusion of the optical absorption and ultrasound reflection contrasts by coherent correlation of either conventional laser-induced photoacoustic imaging or pulse-echo ultrasound imaging separately.