Democratization of Real-time Multi-Spectral Photoacoustic Imaging: Open-Sourced System Architecture for OPOTEK Phocus & Verasonics Vantage Combination
This work lowers technical and cost barriers for researchers using a common laser-detector combination, democratizing access to stable RT-mPAI.
The paper presents an open-source hardware-software architecture that solves synchronization instabilities in real-time multi-spectral photoacoustic imaging (RT-mPAI) for OPOTEK Phocus lasers and Verasonics Vantage systems, enabling stable RT-mPAI without OS-induced timing issues.
Real-time multi-spectral photoacoustic imaging (RT-mPAI) often suffers from synchronization instabilities when interfacing fast-tuning lasers with data acquisition platforms executing on non-real-time operating systems. To overcome this, we establish an open-source hardware-software architecture tailored for the widely adopted combination of the OPOTEK Phocus lasers and Verasonics Vantage systems. By employing an independent micro-controller for deterministic laser trigger counting alongside a decoupled client-server data streaming framework, the proposed system circumvents OS-induced timing deviations and local storage bottlenecks. By open-sourcing this pipeline and cultivating a collaborative environment to share both code and ideas, we aim to lower the technical and cost barriers for RT-mPAI, thereby democratizing access to stable RT-mPAI research and, more ambitiously, fostering a vibrant open-source community.