An Ultrasound Catheter using LIB phenomenon

Abstract

This paper describes an ultrasound (US) catheter using laser induced breakdown (LIB) phenomenon and 3D imaging with the catheter. In this catheter, laser focused with an optical lens is introduced into a tapered optical fiber. The laser passed through the fiber is refocused with lenses to generate LIB inside of a small balloon filled with D₂O and spherical and pulsed US transmitted from LIB. The reflected wave was received at hydrophones and 3D images were reconstructed with synthetic aperture method. Using this catheter, we made the experiments of the imaging of an object in motion. We succeeded in presenting 3D dynamic image with the frame rate of about 5 frame/sec.