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A practical guide to photoacoustic tomography in the life sciences

Nature Methods volume 13, pages 627–638 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

The life sciences can benefit greatly from imaging technologies that connect microscopic discoveries with macroscopic observations. One technology uniquely positioned to provide such benefits is photoacoustic tomography (PAT), a sensitive modality for imaging optical absorption contrast over a range of spatial scales at high speed. In PAT, endogenous contrast reveals a tissue's anatomical, functional, metabolic, and histologic properties, and exogenous contrast provides molecular and cellular specificity. The spatial scale of PAT covers organelles, cells, tissues, organs, and small animals. Consequently, PAT is complementary to other imaging modalities in contrast mechanism, penetration, spatial resolution, and temporal resolution. We review the fundamentals of PAT and provide practical guidelines for matching PAT systems with research needs. We also summarize the most promising biomedical applications of PAT, discuss related challenges, and envision PAT's potential to lead to further breakthroughs.

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Figure 1: Principles of photoacoustic tomography (PAT).
Figure 2: Representative implementations of PAT.
Figure 3: Practical guide to mapping the desired imaging depth, speed, and contrast to the optimal PAT implementation.
Figure 4: Photon propagation regimes in soft tissue and the penetration limits of representative high-resolution optical imaging modalities.
Figure 5: Multiscale PAT of single cells, whole-body small animals, and humans.
Figure 6: In vivo PA molecular imaging.
Figure 7: Representative in vivo PAT applications in life sciences.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Ballard for reading the manuscript and R. Zhang for preparing the figures. This work was sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health grants DP1 EB016986 (NIH Director's Pioneer Award), R01 CA186567 (NIH Director's Transformative Research Award), and U01 NS090579 (BRAIN Initiative), all to L.V.W.

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    Lihong V Wang & Junjie Yao

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L.V.W. has a financial interest in Microphotoacoustics, Inc., which, however, did not support this work. J.Y. declares no competing financial interests.

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Wang, L., Yao, J. A practical guide to photoacoustic tomography in the life sciences. Nat Methods 13, 627–638 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3925

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