Homodyne time-domain acousto-optic imaging for low-gain photodetectors
AssigneesTechnion Research & Development Foundation Limited, Nrc Soreq
InventorsAmir Rozental, Ahiad Levi, Yoav Hazan, Aner Lev
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A laser system for acousto-optics imaging is disclosed. The system comprises: a continuous wave laser source; a first beam splitter configured to split a laser emitted by the continuous wave laser source into a lasing beam and a reference beam; a lasing optical fiber diffusing the lasing beam to a subject; a reference optical fiber providing the reference beam; a collecting optical fiber capable of receiving a scattered beam from the subject; a second beam splitter for merging the scattered and reference beams into a merged beam, and at least one photodetector assembly with a bandwidth higher than the ultrasound frequency to detect the merged beam.
Claims17
A laser system for acousto-optics imaging, comprising:
- a continuous wave laser source;
- a first beam splitter configured to split a laser emitted by the continuous wave laser source into a lasing beam and a reference beam;
- a lasing optical fiber diffusing the lasing beam to a subject;
- a reference optical fiber providing the reference beam;
- a collecting optical fiber capable of receiving a scattered beam from the subject;
- a second beam splitter for merging the scattered and reference beams into a merged beam, and
- at least one photodetector assembly with a bandwidth higher than an ultrasound frequency to detect the merged beam.
A method of acousto-optics imaging, comprising:
- a. activating a continuous wave laser to generate a continuous wave laser beam;
- b. splitting the continuous wave laser beam to a reference beam and a lasing beam;
- c. projecting the lasing beam onto a subject;
- d. collecting scattered light from the subject;
- e. merging the scattered light with the reference beam, creating a merged beam,
- f. delivering the merged beam to at least one photodetector assembly;
- g. processing the reflected ultrasound wave and a signal of the at least one photodetector assembly;
- and
- h. generating an ultrasound image of the subject's tissue on which the signals from the at least one photodetector assembly is overlaid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.