The ex vivo and in vivo imaging, and quantitative characterization of the degradation of surgical sutures (∼500 μm diameter) up to ∼1cm depth is demonstrated using a custom dark-field photo-acoustic microscope (PAM). A practical algorithm is developed to accurately measure the suture diameter during the degradation process. The results from tissue simulating phantoms and mice are compared to ex vivo measurements with an optical microscope demonstrating that PAM has a great deal of potential to characterize the degradation process of surgical sutures. The implications of this work for industrial applications are discussed.
Keywords: (110.5120) Photoacoustic imaging; (170.0170) Medical optics and biotechnology.