High repetition nanosecond Ti: Sapphire laser for photoacoustic microscopy

Abstract

High resolution optical imaging technologies, such as optical coherence tomography or multiphoton microscopy has given us an opportunity to do in vivo imaging noninvasively. However, due to the high laser scattering, these optical imaging techniques were prohibited from obtaining high resolution in the diffusive regime. Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) can overcome this soft depth limit and maintain high resolution at the same time. In the past, PAM was limited to using an Nd:YAG laser, which requires an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) to obtain wavelengths selectively other than the second harmonic. However, OPO is unstable and cumbersome to control. We replaced the Nd:YAG laser and the OPO with a nanosecond pulsed Ti:Sapphire laser to give PAM more flexibility in the speed and the input wavelength while reducing the footprint of our system. This also increased our stability by removing OPO. Using a Ti:Sapphire laser allowed us to increase the pulse repetition rate to 100-500 kHz. Normally, micro-lasers with this pulse repetition rate will suffer from a significant decrease in pulse energy, but we were able to maintain stable pulses with a few hundreds nJ. Also, a well-known advantage of a Ti:Sapphire laser is its tunability from 650 to 1100 nm. For our PAM application, we used a range from 700 to 900 nm to obtain significant functional images. This added flexibility can help acquire functional images such as the angiogenesis process with better contrast. Here, we present a nanosecond Ti:Sapphire laser designated for PAM applications with increased contrast imaging.