• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.02a
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• pp.359-360
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• 2006

Functional photoacoustic tomography is a new non-invasive imaging modality, and it is emerging as a very practical method for imaging biological tissue structures by means of laser-induced ultrasound. Structures with high optical absorption, such as blood vessels, can be imaged with the spatial resolution of ultrasound, which is not limited by the strong light scattering in biological tissues. By varying wavelengths of the laser light and acquiring photoacoustic images, optical absorption spectrum of each image pixel is found. Since the biochemical constituents of tissues determine the spectrum, useful functional information like oxygen saturation ($SO_2$) and total haemoglobin concentration (HbT) can be extracted. In this study, as a proof-of-principle experiment, hypoxic brain tumor vasculature and traumatic brain injury (TBI) of small animal brain are imaged with functional photoacoustic tomography. High resolution brain vasculature images of oxygen saturation and total hemoglobin concentration are provided to visualize hypoxic tumor vasculature, and hemorrhage on the cortex surface by the TBI.