Photoacoustic flow velocity imaging based on complex field decorrelation

Reza Pakdaman Zangabad; Sophinese Iskander-Rizk; Pim van der Meulen; Bram Meijlink; Klazina Kooiman; Tianshi Wang; Antonius F W van der Steen; Gijs van Soest

doi:10.1016/j.pacs.2021.100256

Photoacoustic flow velocity imaging based on complex field decorrelation

Photoacoustics. 2021 Mar 9:22:100256. doi: 10.1016/j.pacs.2021.100256. eCollection 2021 Jun.

Authors

Reza Pakdaman Zangabad¹, Sophinese Iskander-Rizk¹, Pim van der Meulen², Bram Meijlink¹, Klazina Kooiman¹, Tianshi Wang¹, Antonius F W van der Steen^{1

3

4}, Gijs van Soest¹

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Engineering, Department of Cardiology, Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
² Department of Microelectronics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
³ Department of Imaging Science and Physics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
⁴ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging can be used to monitor flowing blood inside the microvascular and capillary bed. Ultrasound speckle decorrelation based velocimetry imaging was previously shown to accurately estimate blood flow velocity in mouse brain (micro-)vasculature. Translating this method to photoacoustic imaging will allow simultaneous imaging of flow velocity and extracting functional parameters like blood oxygenation. In this study, we use a pulsed laser diode and a quantitative method based on normalized first order field autocorrelation function of PA field fluctuations to estimate flow velocities in an ink tube phantom and in the microvasculature of the chorioallantoic membrane of a chicken embryo. We demonstrate how the decorrelation time of signals acquired over frames are related to the flow speed and show that the PA flow analysis based on this approach is an angle independent flow velocity imaging method.

Keywords: Functional imaging; Photoacoustic flow velocity imaging; Pulsed Diode Laser; Speckle dynamics.