Micro-ultrasonic Assessment of Early Stage Clot Formation and Whole Blood Coagulation Using an All-Optical Ultrasound Transducer and Adaptive Signal Processing Algorithm

Advances in Platelet-Dysfunction Diagnostic Technologies

The crucial role of platelets in hemostasis and their broad implications under various physiological conditions underscore the importance of accurate platelet-function testing. Platelets are key to clotting blood and healing wounds. Therefore, accurate diagnosis and management of platelet disorders are vital for patient care. This review outlines the significant advancements in platelet-function testing technologies, focusing on their working principles and the shift from traditional diagnostic methods to more innovative approaches. These improvements have deepened our understanding of platelet-related disorders and ushered in personalized treatment options. Despite challenges such as interpretation of complex data and the costs of new technologies, the potential for artificial-intelligence integration and the creation of wearable monitoring devices offers exciting future possibilities. This review underscores how these technological advances have enhanced the landscape of precision medicine and provided better diagnostic and treatment options for platelet-function disorders.

Biomedical instrumentation of photoacoustic imaging and quantitative sensing for clinical applications

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has been well researched over the last couple of decades and has found many applications in biomedical engineering. This has evinced interest among many scientists in developing this as a compact instrument for biomedical diagnosis. This review discusses various instrumentation developments for PA experimental setups and their applications in the biomedical diagnostic field. It also covers the PA spectral response or PA sensing technique, which uses the spectral information of the PA signal and performs sensing to deliver a fast, cost-effective, and compact screening tool instead of imaging. Primarily, this review provides an overview of PA imaging concepts and the development of hardware instrumentation systems in both the excitation and acquisition stages of this technique. Later, the paper discusses PA sensing, the quantitative spectral parameter extraction from the PA spectrum, and the correlation study of the spectral parameters with the physical parameters of the tissue. This PA sensing technique was used to diagnose various diseases, such as thyroid nodules, breast cancer, renal disorders, and zoonotic diseases, based on the mechanical and biological characteristics of the tissues. The paper culminates with a discussion section that provides future developments that are necessary to take this technique into clinical applications as a quantitative PA imaging technique.

Biomedical Application of Photoacoustics: A Plethora of Opportunities

The photoacoustic (PA) technique is a non-invasive, non-ionizing hybrid technique that exploits laser irradiation for sample excitation and acquires an ultrasound signal generated due to thermoelastic expansion of the sample. Being a hybrid technique, PA possesses the inherent advantages of conventional optical (high resolution) and ultrasonic (high depth of penetration in biological tissue) techniques and eliminates some of the major limitations of these conventional techniques. Hence, PA has been employed for different biomedical applications. In this review, we first discuss the basic physics of PA. Then, we discuss different aspects of PA techniques, which includes PA imaging and also PA frequency spectral analysis. The theory of PA signal generation, detection and analysis is also detailed in this work. Later, we also discuss the major biomedical application area of PA technique.