Patent ID: 8870770

Claim:
A method for imaging a region of interest, the method comprising: (a) stimulating the region of interest with light from a light source to produce a set of ultrasound waves through a photoacoustic effect; (b) focusing the set of ultrasound waves through an acoustic lens to produce focused waves, the acoustic lens being configured such that said ultrasound waves originating at a single time at an object plane in the region of interest are focused onto an image plane and arrive at the image plane at times separated by no more than a time gate width so that all points in the object plane are focused simultaneously; (c) detecting the focused waves in a transducer while applying a time gate corresponding to the time gate width to produce time-gated photoacoustic signals, the time-gated photoacoustic signals providing at least one photoacoustic C-scan at any given period of time, step (c) being repeated multiple times to provide real-time imaging; and (d) imaging the region of interest from the at least one photoacoustic C-scan provided in steps step (c).