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Ultrasensitive plano-concave optical microresonators for ultrasound sensing

Nature Photonics volume 11, pages 714–719 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Highly sensitive broadband ultrasound detectors are needed to expand the capabilities of biomedical ultrasound, photoacoustic imaging and industrial ultrasonic non-destructive testing techniques. Here, a generic optical ultrasound sensing concept based on a novel plano-concave polymer microresonator is described. This achieves strong optical confinement (Q-factors > 105) resulting in very high sensitivity with excellent broadband acoustic frequency response and wide directivity. The concept is highly scalable in terms of bandwidth and sensitivity. To illustrate this, a family of microresonator sensors with broadband acoustic responses up to 40 MHz and noise-equivalent pressures as low as 1.6 mPa per √Hz have been fabricated and comprehensively characterized in terms of their acoustic performance. In addition, their practical application to high-resolution photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging is demonstrated. The favourable acoustic performance and design flexibility of the technology offers new opportunities to advance biomedical and industrial ultrasound-based techniques.

The sensitive detection of broadband ultrasound waves in the hundreds of kHz to tens of MHz range underpins techniques such as biomedical photoacoustic tomography and microscopy1,2, clinical ultrasound imaging3 and industrial ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation and monitoring4,5,6. Piezoelectric ultrasound receivers represent the current state of the art but present two key acoustic performance limitations. Firstly, achieving the high acoustic sensitivities required for large imaging depths necessitates piezoelectric element sizes on a millimetre to centimetre scale which result in a highly directional response at MHz frequencies due to spatial averaging. This can have the counter-productive effect of degrading image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and fidelity in photoacoustic tomography, synthetic aperture pulse-echo ultrasound imaging and other techniques which require sub-wavelength detectors with a near omnidirectional response. Secondly, achieving the very highest sensitivities typically requires detectors that are fabricated from acoustically resonant piezoceramic materials. This can result in a sharply peaked frequency response thereby precluding a faithful representation of the incident acoustic wave and ultimately compromising image fidelity.

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Fig. 1: Plano-concave optical microresonator ultrasound sensor.
Fig. 2: Plano-concave microresonator sensor sensitivity.
Fig. 3: Acoustic frequency response and directivity.
Fig. 4: Optical fibre microresonator sensor.
Fig. 5: Imaging demonstrations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the European Union project FAMOS (FP7 ICT, Contract 317744), a Ramsay Trust Memorial Fellowship, the European Research Council through European Starting Grant 310970 MOPHIM, an Innovative Engineering for Health award by the Wellcome Trust (WT101957) and King’s College London and University College London Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre, Cancer Research UK and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, in association with the Medical Research Council and Department of Health, UK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    James A. Guggenheim, Jing Li, Thomas J. Allen, Richard J. Colchester, Sacha Noimark, Olumide Ogunlade, Adrien E. Desjardins, Edward Z. Zhang & Paul C. Beard

  2. Department of Chemistry, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Sacha Noimark & Ivan P. Parkin

  3. Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Ioannis Papakonstantinou

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Contributions

J.A.G. and P.C.B. wrote the paper. J.A.G. and E.Z.Z. fabricated the sensors. J.A.G., E.Z.Z., I.P., J.L. and P.C.B. developed the fabrication process. J.A.G. and E.Z.Z. performed the sensor characterisations. J.A.G., J.L., E.Z.Z. and P.C.B. developed the characterization methods. T.J.A. and O.O. performed ORPAM experiments. T.J.A., O.O., E.Z.Z. and P.C.B. designed the ORPAM experiments. T.J.A. and J.A.G. analysed the ORPAM data. S.N. and R.J.C. performed the pulse-echo experiment. S.N., R.J.C., E.Z.Z. and A.E.D. designed the pulse-echo experiment. S.N., R.J.C., I.P.P. and A.E.D. developed the ultrasound source used in the pulse-echo experiment. J.A.G. performed tomographic photoacoustic imaging experiments. J.A.G., E.Z.Z. and P.C.B. designed the tomographic imaging experiments. E.Z.Z. and P.C.B. originally conceived the microresonator sensor concept.

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Correspondence to Paul C. Beard.

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Guggenheim, J.A., Li, J., Allen, T.J. et al. Ultrasensitive plano-concave optical microresonators for ultrasound sensing. Nature Photon 11, 714–719 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-017-0027-x

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