As photoacoustic imaging (PAI) begins to mature and undergo clinical translation, there is a need for well-validated, standardized performance test methods to support device development, quality control, and regulatory evaluation. Despite recent progress, current PAI phantoms may not adequately replicate tissue light and sound transport over the full range of optical wavelengths and acoustic frequencies employed by reported PAI devices. Here we introduce polyacrylamide (PAA) hydrogel as a candidate material for fabricating stable phantoms with well-characterized optical and acoustic properties that are biologically relevant over a broad range of system design parameters. We evaluated suitability of PAA phantoms for conducting image quality assessment of three PAI systems with substantially different operating parameters including two commercial systems and a custom system. Imaging results indicated that appropriately tuned PAA phantoms are useful tools for assessing and comparing PAI system image quality. These phantoms may also facilitate future standardization of performance test methodology.

随着光声成像 (PAI) 开始成熟并进行临床转化，需要经过充分验证的标准化性能测试方法来支持设备开发、质量控制和监管评估。尽管最近取得了进展，但当前的 PAI 模型可能无法在已报道的 PAI 设备所采用的整个光波长和声频率范围内充分复制组织光和声音传输。在这里，我们介绍聚丙烯酰胺（PAA）水凝胶作为一种候选材料，用于制造稳定的模型，该模型具有良好的光学和声学特性，这些特性在广泛的系统设计参数范围内具有生物学相关性。我们评估了 PAA 模型对三个具有显着不同操作参数的 PAI 系统（包括两个商业系统和一个定制系统）进行图像质量评估的适用性。成像结果表明，适当调整的 PAA 模型是评估和比较 PAI 系统图像质量的有用工具。这些模型还可以促进未来性能测试方法的标准化。