Characterization of a broadband all-optical ultrasound transducer - From optical and acoustical properties to imaging

Yang Hou, Jin Sung Kim, Sheng Wen Huang, Shai Ashkenazi, L. Jay Guo, Matthew O'Donnell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

A broadband all-optical ultrasound transducer has been designed, fabricated, and evaluated for high-frequency ultrasound imaging. The device consists of a 2-D gold nanostructure imprinted on top of a glass substrate, followed by a 3 μm PDMS layer and a 30 nm gold layer. A laser pulse at the resonance wavelength of the gold nanostructure is focused onto the surface for ultrasound generation, while the gold nanostructure, together with the 30 nm thick gold layer and the PDMS layer in between, forms an etalon for ultrasound detection, which uses a CW laser at a wavelength far from resonance as the probing beam. The center frequency of a pulse-echo signal recorded in the far field of the transducer is 40 MHz with -6 dB bandwidth of 57 MHz. The signal to noise ratio (SNR) from a 70 μm diameter transmit element combined with a 20 μm diameter receive element probing a near perfect reflector positioned 1.5 mm from the transducer surface is more than 10 dB and has the potential to be improved by at least another 40 dB. A high-frequency ultrasound array has been emulated using multiple measurements from the transducer while mechanically scanning an imaging target. Characterization of the device's optical and acoustical properties, as well as preliminary imaging results, strongly suggest that all-optical ultrasound transducers can be used to build high-frequency arrays for real-time high-resolution ultrasound imaging.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number4589199
Pages (from-to)1867-1877
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control
Volume55
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2008

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 12, 2007; accepted January 28, 2008. This work is supported in part by NIH under grants EB003455, EB003449 and EB004933. Y. Hou, J.-S. Kim, and L. J. Guo are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (e-mail: [email protected]). S.-W. Huang and S. Ashkenazi are with the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. M. O’Donnell is with the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TUFFC.2008.870

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