Photoacoustic imaging of the brain with an ultrasensitive micro optomechanical ultrasound sensor array

Photoacoustic imaging is the youngest and most rapidly advancing medical imaging modality, anticipated to become as large as MRI and ultrasonography. It has led to new insights in the brain’s structure, functional activity and diseases by imaging anaesthetised head-restrained mice. However, to study the behaviour of freely moving awake mice at high resolutions and imaging depths, an array of small and ultrasensitive sensors are required with a parallel readout system and lightweight flexible cables. The objective of this fellowship is to deliver a brain imaging headset for freely moving and awake mice based on a recently invented ultrasensitive small footprint optomechanical ultrasound sensor. To achieve this, novel acoustically focused matrix sensors are designed and tailored for transcranial tomographic mouse brain imaging, with back-projection and iterative imaging algorithms and a nontrivial parallel read-out system of matrix sensor arrays through few optical fibres. In the end, functional brain activations in the somatosensory barrel field cortex and visual cortex will be demonstrated.