Short pulse laser induced thermo-elastic deformation imaging

Absorption of nanosecond laser pulses induces rapid thermo-elastic deformation in tissue, i.e. a sub-micrometer scale displacement happens within a couple of microseconds. In this study, we initially investigate the depth-resolved deformation using a 1.5 MHz phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) system. Functional images can be reconstructed based on the detected deformation, which enables a new imaging modality called thermo-elastic deformation imaging (TDI). Our results show that the associated displacement is related to the optical absorption of the short laser pulses. The TDI images can provide tissue type information in addition to the conventional OCT images.

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