Nonlinearity of optoacoustic signals and a new contrast mechanism for imaging

Jaber Malekzadeh-Najafabadi; Jaya Prakash; Daniel Razansky; Jorge Ripoll; Vipul Gujrati; Vasilis Ntziachristos

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01772-7

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Nonlinearity of optoacoustic signals and a new contrast mechanism for imaging

Original Articles

- Nonlinearity of optoacoustic signals and a new contrast mechanism for imaging
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 5, Pages: 1420-1432(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Chair of Biological Imaging, Central Institute for Translational Cancer Research (TranslaTUM), School of Medicine and Health & School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
  2.Institute of Biological and Medical Imaging, Bioengineering Center, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Neuherberg, Germany
  3.Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  4.Department of Bioengineering and Aerospace Engineering, Universidad Carlos Ⅲ de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  5.Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
  6.Present address: Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  7.Present address: Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India
- Author bio：
  
  Jaber Malekzadeh-Najafabadi (jmalekzadehn@ethz.ch)
  Vasilis Ntziachristos (bioimaging.translatum@tum.de)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01772-7
  CLC：
- Received：19 July 2024，
  
  Revised：17 January 2025，
  
  Accepted：31 January 2025，
  
  Published Online：27 March 2025，
  
  Published：31 May 2025
- Accepted：
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Malekzadeh-Najafabadi, J. et al. Nonlinearity of optoacoustic signals and a new contrast mechanism for imaging. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 1420-1432 (2025).
DOI：

Malekzadeh-Najafabadi, J. et al. Nonlinearity of optoacoustic signals and a new contrast mechanism for imaging. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 1420-1432 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01772-7.

摘要

Abstract

Optoacoustic signals behave nonlinearly at light fluences above a few mJ/cm

which may affect the interpretation and quantification of measurements. It has been proposed that optoacoustic nonlinearity arises from the heat-induced formation of nanobubbles or changes in local thermo-physical parameters. However

such explanations are only valid at much higher fluences than typically used in biomedical optoacoustic imaging (

20 mJ/cm

) or in the presence of materials with high absorption coefficients such as gold nanoparticles. We propose herein that electromagnetic permittivity changes in response to photon absorption are major source of optoacoustic signal nonlinearity at low fluences. We provide theoretical and experimental evidence that supports this postulation and show that optoacoustic pressure responses due to permittivity changes

which are function of thermally excited third-order nonlinear susceptibility

can explain the nonlinear behavior of the optoacoustic signal. Since different materials exhibit different thermally excited third-order nonlinear susceptibility

this property could function as a new contrast mechanism that can identify the sensitivity of a substance's dielectric constant to photon-induced temperature changes. Consequently

we propose an imaging method based on nonlinear optoacoustic signals that exploits this newly identified contrast mechanism. These findings may have far-reaching implications for improving the accuracy of optoacoustics and utilizing the proposed new contrast mechanism would advance our understanding of cellular and tissue functionality.

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references

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