Advanced photoacoustic and thermoacoustic sensing and imaging beyond pulsed absorption contrast

In this paper, we review the recent progress in the photoacoustic (PA) and thermoacoustic (TA) imaging domain. Going beyond the conventional investigation of optical/microwave absorption contrast, this review will focus more on the new developments of PA and TA imaging towards multi-contrast mechanisms, such as multimodal PA/TA imaging, viscosity imaging, temperature monitoring, Doppler detection of flow speed, etc. In addition, several interesting techniques utilizing PA/TA will be reviewed, including photoacoustic-guided optical focusing, electrical circuit modeling of PA/TA effect, TA imaging with coherent continuous-wave (CW) magnetic and radio-frequency (RF) excitations, as well as its nonlinear effect. Finally, some prospects about the further improvement of PA/TA imaging techniques are suggested, followed by the conclusion.