Simultaneous multispectral coded excitation using Gold codes for photoacoustic imaging

Photoacoustics (PA) enables obtaining functional information like optics and depth information similarly to ultrasonics. The prospect of PA has already been discussed in previous studies, but there is a current demand for PA imaging that works as real-time imaging to acquire multispectral information in simultaneous irradiation with a high signal-to-noise ratio. We propose coded excitation using Gold codes that have good autocorrelation and cross-correlation properties to satisfy this demand. In this study, we also demonstrate the feasibility through simulations of RF signals and linear scanning B-mode imaging, and conduct an experiment to determine the feasibility of Gold codes for PA imaging. Our results show similarity to the theoretically predicted value, supporting the effective use of Gold codes.