High pulse energy fibre laser as an excitation source for photoacoustic tomography.

A custom fibre laser designed as an excitation source for biomedical photoacoustic tomography has been developed. It is based on a custom-drawn large core diameter fibre (200 µm) that enables high pulse energies (∼10 mJ) to be achieved. The system can provide variable pulse durations (10 - 500 ns) and pulse repetition frequencies (100 Hz - 1 kHz), as well as arbitrary pulse bursts according to specific user defined sequences.