Effect of Photoacoustic Radar Chirp Parameters on Profilometric Information

Abstract

Photoacoustic imaging for biomedical application has attracted much research in recent years. To date, most of the work has focused on pulsed photoacoustics. Recent developments have seen the implementation of a radar pulse compression methodology into continuous wave photoacoustic modality, however very little theory has been developed in support of this approach. In this thesis, the one-dimensional theory of radar photoacousticsfor pulse compressedlinear frequency modulated continuous sinusoidal laserphotoacoustics is developed.The effect of the chirp parameters on the corresponding photoacoustic signal is investigated, and guidelines for choosing the chirp parametersfor absorber profilometric detectionare given based on the developed theory and simulations. Simulated results are also compared to available experimental results and show a good agreement.