Solving the speckle decorrelation challenge in acousto-optic sensing using tandem nanosecond pulses within the ultrasound period.

We present a novel acousto-optic (AO) method, based on a nanosecond laser system, which will enable us to obtain AO signals in liquid turbid media. By diverting part of the light in a delay line, we inject tandem pulses with 27 ns separation. The change of the speckle pattern, caused by the ultrasound phase shift, reduces the speckle contrast of the integrated speckle pattern captured in a single camera frame. With these tandem pulses, we were able to perform AO on a 2 cm liquid turbid medium in transmission mode. We show the raw signal and a spatial AO scan of a homogenous water-intralipid sample. This approach is potentially capable of AO probing in vivo, since the acquisition time (of approximately 40 ns) is four orders of magnitude less than the typical time scales of speckle decorrelation found in vivo. The method may eventually enable us to obtain fluence compensated photoacoustic signals generated by the same laser.