Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) are sensitive to optical absorption and scattering characteristics, respectively. As such, the integration of these two modalities in order to combine important complementary information has garnered much attention. Due to the relatively low axial resolution of PAM, PAM and OCT dual modality systems generally have a large resolution gap, especially for reflection mode systems. In this study, based on a wide-band transparent pure-optical ultrasonic detector, we developed a dual modality system (PAM-OCT system) in which PAM has a similar spatial resolution (i.e. several micrometers in both the lateral and axial directions) to OCT. In addition, due to the optical transparency advantage, the integrated system works in reflection mode, which is ideal for in vivo biomedical imaging. We successfully imaged the skin of a mouse hindlimb, which cannot be done by a transmission mode dual modality system. Our work demonstrates this dual modality system has potential in biomedical studies with complementary imaging contrasts.

光声显微镜（PAM）和光学相干断层扫描（OCT）分别对光学吸收和散射特性敏感。这样，为了结合重要的补充信息而将这两种方式进行整合已经引起了广泛的关注。由于PAM的轴向分辨率较低，因此PAM和OCT双模态系统通常具有较大的分辨率差距，尤其是对于反射模式系统。在这项研究中，我们基于宽带透明的纯光超声探测器，开发了一种双模态系统（PAM-OCT系统），其中PAM具有相似的空间分辨率（即在OCT的横向和轴向上都为数微米）。另外，由于光学透明性的优势，该集成系统以反射模式工作，非常适合于体内生物医学成像。我们成功地成像了鼠标后肢的皮肤，这是传输模式双模态系统无法完成的。我们的工作表明，这种双模态系统在生物医学研究中具有互补的成像对比潜力。