International Journal of Optics
Volume 2011, Article ID 818302, 6 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/818302
Development of Ultrasonic Modulation Probe for Fluorescence Tomography Based on Acousto-Optic Effect
Department of Electronics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku Institute of Technology, 35-1 Yagiyama-Kasumi cho, Taihaku-ku, Sendai 982-8577, Japan
Received 24 December 2010; Revised 4 April 2011; Accepted 30 May 2011
Academic Editor: Jianan Qu
Copyright © 2011 Trinh Quang Duc et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
We have developed an ultrasonic probe for fluorescence modulation to image fluorescence within biological tissues. The probe consists of a focused ultrasonic transducer mounted on actuators for mechanical fan scanning, which can be used in contact with the measuring object aiming for clinical application. The mechanical fan scanning employed in the probe has a beneficial feature of portability. As a result, fluorescent beads, which were localized with the diameter of 2 mm at 20 mm depth in a pork meat tissue, were detected with resolution of 3 mm. The system performance denotes the feasibility of development towards the final goal of ultrasonic fluorescence modulation tomography for clinical applications.