Grueneisen Relaxation Photoacoustic Microscopy

The temperature-dependent property of the Grueneisen parameter has been employed in photoacoustic imaging mainly to measure tissue temperature. Here we explore this property using a different approach and develop Grueneisen relaxation photoacoustic microscopy (GR-PAM), a technique that images nonradiative absorption with confocal optical resolution. GR-PAM sequentially delivers two identical laser pulses with a microsecond-scale time delay. The first laser pulse generates a photoacoustic signal and thermally tags the in-focus absorbers. When the second laser pulse excites the tagged absorbers within the thermal relaxation time, a photoacoustic signal stronger than the first one is produced, owing to the temperature dependence of the Grueneisen parameter. GR-PAM detects the amplitude difference between the two colocated photoacoustic signals, confocally imaging the nonradiative absorption. We greatly improved axial resolution from 45 μm to 2.3 μm and, at the same time, slightly improved lateral resolution from 0.63 μm to 0.41 μm. In addition, the optical sectioning capability facilitates the measurement of the absolute absorption coefficient without fluence calibration.