2019/10/22 by Maxim Cherkashin, Cherkashin, Maxim, Carsten Brenner +6
Engineering · Mathematics · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Acoustics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Computer science #FOS: Physical sciences #Light field #Light scattering #Materials science #Mathematics #Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy Techniques #Optics #Optics (physics.optics) #Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Imaging #Physics #Random lasers and scattering media #Refractive index #Scattering #Transversal (combinatorics) #Ultrasound #Waveguide #physics.bio-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1910.09803
10 pages, Supplementary: 9 pages, 3 Movies
arxiv created 2019/10/22 · openalex publication_date 2019/10/22 · arxiv updated 2019/10/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Biomedical applications requiring tissue diagnosis, activation, and treatment could be substantially leveraged by optical methods, owing to their unique feature set. However, their widespread application is severely limited by the strong light scattering that occurs in many tissues of interest, which dramatically limits achievable penetration depths. Here we demonstrate a new method to solve this issue by utilizing free-running ultrasound waves, transversal to the light propagation direction, to guide light into deeper tissue regions. We study the formation of the ultrasound-induced refractive index structures and waveguides using simple ultrasound field configurations and analyze their effects on the propagation of short light pulses. Our results show waveguide support and associated light intensity increase up to the depths of at least 20 mm in Intralipid-20% phantoms with a reduced scattering coeffcient close to real tissue. Thus we present an important milestone towards low-loss light delivery, focusing and manipulation in deep tissue.