Optical Ultrasound Sensors for Biomedical Photoacoustics

Recent developments in optical ultrasound sensors bring new opportunities for photoacoustic imaging. Compared to conventional piezoelectric transducers, these optical sensors generally hold the advantages of high sensitivity, broad bandwidth, wide acceptance, and miniaturized footprint. In this chapter, we review the historical developments of optical ultrasound sensors and briefly introduce three important types of miniaturized sensors and the ways of parallel interrogation. Using these state-of-the-art sensors, representative imaging applications on a variety of live animals are also described here. We envision that the development of optical ultrasound sensors is promising in advancing deeper and higher-resolution photoacoustic imaging.