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Title: Photoacoustic testing of shear viscoelastic properties of soft tissues using annular beam illumination
This Letter reports a new, to the best of our knowledge, photoacoustic excitation method for evaluating the shear viscoelastic properties of soft tissues. By illuminating the target surface with an annular pulsed laser beam, circularly converging surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are generated, focused, and detected at the center of the annular beam. The shear elasticity and shear viscosity of the target are extracted from the dispersive phase velocity of the SAWs based on the Kelvin–Voigt model and nonlinear regression fitting. Agar phantoms with different concentrations, and animal liver and fat tissue samples have successfully been characterized. Different from previous methods, the self-focusing of the converging SAWs allows sufficient SNR to be obtained even with low pulsed laser energy density, which makes this approach well compatible with soft tissues under bothex vivoandin vivotesting conditions.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1809710 2036134
PAR ID:
10376529
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
Optical Society of America
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Optics Letters
Volume:
47
Issue:
21
ISSN:
0146-9592; OPLEDP
Format(s):
Medium: X Size: Article No. 5583
Size(s):
Article No. 5583
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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