Investigating mechanisms of laser pulse-induced reflectivity modulations in photoacoustic remote sensing with a 10 million frames-per-second camera

Photoacoustic remote sensing has been recently developed as an all-optical imaging modality capable of imaging a variety of endogenous contrast agents label-free. Initially predicted laser pulse-induced refractive index perturbation-based interrogation beam reflectivity modulations have been found to be orders of magnitude smaller than those typically observed experimentally. In this report we utilize a 10 million frames-per-second camera to further investigate these predicted reflectivity modulations, while also exploring other potential mechanisms of laser pulse-induced reflectivity modulations. Laser-induced motion is demonstrated both laterally for gold wires suspended and submerged in air and water, respectively, and carbon fibers submerged in water, and axial motion is observed in gold wires submerged in a depth gradient of intralipid solution. This laser-induced sample motion is anticipated to cause reflectivity modulations local to the interrogation beam profile in microscopy set-ups. Non-motion-based maximum intensity modulations of 3% are also observed in gold wires submerged in water, indicating the presence of the originally predicted reflectivity modulations. Overall, these observations are important as they provide a widefield view of laser-pulse interactions unavailable in previous point scanning-based photoacoustic remote sensing microscopy configurations, where observed mechanisms occur on time-scales orders of magnitude faster than equivalent field of view point scanning capabilities.

Automated summary

Photoacoustic remote sensing is an all-optical imaging modality that can image various contrast agents without labeling. Using a high-speed camera, we further investigated the predicted reflectivity modulations caused by laser pulses and explored other potential mechanisms. We observed laser-induced motion in different samples and also non-motion-based intensity modulations, which are important for understanding the laser-pulse interactions.