Wearable 3-D Photoacoustic Tomography for Functional Brain Imaging in Behaving Rats

Understanding the relationship between brain function and behavior remains a major challenge in neuroscience. Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is an emerging technique that allows for noninvasive in vivo brain imaging at micrometer-millisecond spatiotemporal resolution. In this article, a novel, miniaturized 3D wearable PAT (3D-wPAT) technique is described for brain imaging in behaving rats. 3D-wPAT has three layers of fully functional acoustic transducer arrays. Phantom imaging experiments revealed that the in-plane X-Y spatial resolutions were ~200 μm for each acoustic detection layer. The functional imaging capacity of 3D-wPAT was demonstrated by mapping the cerebral oxygen saturation via multi-wavelength irradiation in behaving hyperoxic rats. In addition, we demonstrated that 3D-wPAT could be used for monitoring sensory stimulus-evoked responses in behaving rats by measuring hemodynamic responses in the primary visual cortex during visual stimulation. Together, these results show the potential of 3D-wPAT for brain study in behaving rodents.