Light plus sound: combination technology delivers a one-two punch to disease.

In just a decade, optoacoustic or photoacoustic imaging has become one of the fastest growing areas of biomedical technology, exploding from just a handful of research groups in the late 1990s to more than 400 dedicated scientists and engineers today. Much of the expansion has come since researchers started pairing optoacoustics with the already-existing technology of medical ultrasound and envisioning how it could easily step into the clinic to fight a diversity of diseases.