Rotational ultrasound and photoacoustic tomography of the human body
Imaging the human body's morphological and angiographic information is essential for diagnosing, monitoring, and treating medical conditions. Ultrasonography performs the morphological assessment of the soft tissue based on acoustic impedance variations, whereas photoacoustic tomography (PAT) can visualize blood vessels based on intrinsic hemoglobin absorption. Three-dimensional (3D) panoramic imaging of the vasculature is generally not practical in conventional ultrasonography with limited field-of-view (FOV) probes, and PAT does not provide sufficient scattering-based soft tissue morphological contrast. Complementing each other, fast panoramic rotational ultrasound tomography (RUST) and PAT are integrated for hybrid rotational ultrasound and photoacoustic tomography (RUS-PAT), which obtains 3D ultrasound structural and PAT angiographic images of the human body quasi-simultaneously. The RUST functionality is achieved in a cost-effective manner using a single-element ultrasonic transducer for ultrasound transmission and rotating arc-shaped arrays for 3D panoramic detection. RUST is superior to conventional ultrasonography, which either has a limited FOV with a linear array or is high-cost with a hemispherical array that requires both transmission and receiving. By switching the acoustic source to a light source, the system is conveniently converted to PAT mode to acquire angiographic images in the same region. Using RUS-PAT, we have successfully imaged the human head, breast, hand, and foot with a 10 cm diameter FOV, submillimeter isotropic resolution, and 10 s imaging time for each modality. The 3D RUS-PAT is a powerful tool for high-speed, 3D, dual-contrast imaging of the human body with potential for rapid clinical translation.