We constructed a flexible gold-polydimethylsiloxane (gold-PDMS) nanocomposites film with controllable thickness and light transmittance, to realize optically-excited simultaneous photoacoustic (PA) and ultrasound (US) imaging under a single laser pulse irradiation. Benefiting from the excellent thermoelastic properties, the gold-PDMS film absorbs part of the incident laser energy and produces a high-intensity US, which is used to realize US imaging. Meanwhile, the partly transmitted light is used to excite samples for PA imaging. By controlling the thickness of the gold-PDMS, we can control the center frequency in the US imaging. We experimentally analyzed the frequency of the produced US signal by the gold-PDMS film and compared it with the finite element analysis (FEA) method, where the experiments agree with the FEA results. This method is demonstrated by the experiments on phantoms and a mouse model. Our work provides a cost-effective methodology for simultaneous PA and US imaging.

中文翻译：

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基于柔性金-PDMS薄膜的光激发同时光声和超声成像

我们构建了具有可控厚度和透光率的柔性金-聚二甲基硅氧烷（gold-PDMS）纳米复合材料薄膜，以实现在单次激光脉冲照射下的光激发同时光声（PA）和超声（US）成像。得益于优异的热弹性，金-PDMS薄膜吸收部分入射激光能量并产生高强度US，用于实现US成像。同时，部分透射光用于激发样品进行 PA 成像。通过控制金-PDMS 的厚度，我们可以控制美国成像中的中心频率。我们对金-PDMS 薄膜产生的 US 信号的频率进行了实验分析，并将其与有限元分析 (FEA) 方法进行了比较，实验结果与 FEA 结果一致。该方法通过模型和小鼠模型的实验得到证明。我们的工作为同时进行 PA 和 US 成像提供了一种具有成本效益的方法。