Image Sensing via Photoacoustic Effect

A new preprint titled "An image sensor based on single-pulse photoacoustic electromagnetic detection (SPEED): a simulation study" proposes a concept image sensors that relies on the conversion of electromagnetic energy into sound (photoacoustic effect). The claim is that this technique can detect radiation over a much broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Image sensors are the backbone of many imaging technologies of great importance to modern sciences, being particularly relevant in biomedicine. An ideal image sensor should be usable through all the electromagnetic spectrum (large bandwidth), it should be fast (millions of frames per second) to fulfil the needs of many microscopy applications, and it should be cheap, in order to ensure the sustainability of the healthcare system. However, current image sensor technologies have fundamental limitations in terms of bandwidth, imaging rate or price. In here, we briefly sketch the principles of an alternative image sensor concept termed Single-pulse Photoacoustic Electromagnetic Detection (SPEED). SPEED leverages the principles of optoacoustic (photoacoustic) tomography to overcome several of the hard limitations of todays image sensors. Specifically, SPEED sensors can operate with a massive portion of the electromagnetic spectrum at high frame rate (millions of frames per second) and low cost. Using simulations, we demonstrate the feasibility of the SPEED methodology and we discuss the step towards its implementation.

 

 

 

[Blog poster's comments: I think this is an interesting concept, especially given that there are ultrasonic transducers based on CMUT (capacitive micromachined ultrasound tranducer) technology which can be miniaturized and manufactured at scale using a CMUT-in-CMOS process. For example, the Butterfly iQ handheld ultrasound scanner has 9000 CMUT "pixels". However, overall spatial resolution will still be a challenge with current technology. The 1/20x simulation shown in this preprint (see bottom figure above) is still an optimistic case.]