Recent advances in high power, pulsed, light emitting diodes (LEDs) have shown potential as fast, robust and relatively inexpensive excitation sources for photoacoustic imaging (PAI), yet systematic characterization of performance for biomedical imaging is still lacking. We report here technical and biological validation studies of a commercial dual-wavelength LED-based PAI and ultrasound system. Phantoms and small animals were used to assess temporal precision. In phantom studies, we found high temporal stability of the LED-based PAI system, with no significant drift in performance observed during 6 h of operation or over 30 days of repeated measurements. In vivo dual-wavelength imaging was able to map the dynamics of changes in blood oxygenation during oxygen-enhanced imaging and reveal the kinetics of indocyanine green contrast agent inflow after intravenous administration (T_max∼6 min). Taken together, these studies indicate that LED-based excitation could be promising for future application in functional and molecular PAI.

高功率脉冲发光二极管 (LED) 的最新进展已显示出作为光声成像 (PAI) 的快速、稳健且相对便宜的激发源的潜力，但仍然缺乏生物医学成像性能的系统表征。我们在此报告基于商业双波长 LED 的 PAI 和超声系统的技术和生物验证研究。使用模型和小动物来评估时间精度。在模型研究中，我们发现基于 LED 的 PAI 系统具有较高的时间稳定性，在 6 小时的运行或 30 多天的重复测量期间没有观察到明显的性能漂移。体内双波长成像能够绘制氧增强成像过程中血氧变化的动态图，并揭示静脉注射后吲哚菁绿造影剂流入的动力学（T _max ∼6 min）。总而言之，这些研究表明基于 LED 的激发在功能和分子 PAI 中的未来应用前景广阔。