Fiber optic distributed sensor for hydrocarbon leak localization based on transmission/reflection measurement

A novel type of distributed fiber optic sensor for petroleum hydrocarbon leak detection and localization based on the measurement of transmitted and Rayleigh backscattered power is presented. The sensor structure includes a sensitive polymer, which reversibly expands in hydrocarbon presence and induces the bending losses in the fiber. The location of the loss region is determined from unique relationships between normalized transmitted and Rayleigh backscattered powers for different positions of the disturbance along the test fiber. The localization of a strong disturbance with an estimated accuracy of ±1 m along a 2.844 km-length single-mode fiber was demonstrated.     

光声光谱检测装置中光声池的数值计算及优化

利用光声光谱技术进行痕量气体的检测具有独特的优势,光声池是系统装置中最为重要的核心部件,它决定着整机性能的优劣.以一圆柱形共振型光声池为研究对象,基于声学与吸收光谱学的基本理论,建立了光声池声场激发的数学模型;利用数值模拟方法对光声池空腔结构进行了声学模态仿真,获得了前8阶声学模态值以及声压可视化振型;在考虑热黏性声学损耗的作用下,对光声池进行了热-声耦合多物理场仿真计算;将仿真结果与解析计算和实验结果进行对比,明确了利用数值模拟方法来计算光声池有关指标的可靠性与可行性;针对光声池的优化问题,提出了一种将响应面代理模型与遗传算法相结合的优化算法,在将原光声池中的谐振腔两端形貌更改为喇叭口形的情况下,通过优化算法获得了以光声池品质因数Q及池常数C_(cell)为最大值寻优的Pareto最优解集;选取一组解进行考察,结果表明,代理模型预测值与数值模拟值指标最大误差仅为1.3%,优化后的新型光声池Q较之前增长了48.9%, C_(cell)增长了34.4%.研究方法可为光声光谱中光声池的优化设计提供参考借鉴.     

Adaptive beamforming for photoacoustic imaging

An adaptive photoacoustic image reconstruction technique that combines coherence factor (CF) weighting and the minimum variance (MV) method is introduced. The backprojection method is widely used to reconstruct photoacoustic tomography images. Owing to the scattering of light, the quality of the photoacoustic imaging can be degraded. CF, an adaptive weighting technique, is known to improve the lateral resolution of photoacoustic images. In addition, an MV adaptive beamforming method can further improve the image quality by suppressing signals from off-axis directions. Experimental studies are performed to quantify the spatial resolution and contrast of the adaptive photoacoustic beamforming methods.     

光声池中微弱光声信号检测

大气中的污染源气体含量很少, 用光声光谱对其进行监测得到的光声信号极其微弱. 本文首先分析微弱信号产生机理, 在分析Holmes Duffing方程的基础上, 提出了适合光声池微弱信号检测的变尺度差分方法. 该方法通过对信号进行尺度变换, 再做差分来检测微弱信号. 理论分析和实验表明, 变尺度差分方法能很好地抑制系统相空间的共模噪声, 而且能很好地凸显混沌状态临界值. 变尺度差分方法测出的信号相对误差都小于5%, 说明其可以用于较高频率、 相位和频率都未知的微弱光声信号幅值检测. 关键词： 光声光谱 微弱信号 幅值 Duffing     

High-stability reference setup for photoacoustic spectroscopy

2 laser at 9.676 μm. Received: 2 December 1996/Revised version: 2 April 1997     

Feasibility of photoacoustic tomography for ophthalmology

For the eyeball composed of membrane and liquid, the contrast of ultrasound imaging is not high due to its small variance in acoustic impedance. As a new imaging modality, photoacoustic tomography combines the advantages of pure optical and ultrasonic imaging together and can provide high resolution, high contrast images. In this paper, the feasibility of photoacoustic tomography for ophthalmology is studied experimentally. A Q-switched Nd:YAG pulsed laser with 7-ns pulse width is used to generate photoacoustic signal of a porcine eyeball in vitro. The two-dimensional (2D) optical absorption image of the entire eyeball is reconstructed by time-domain spherical back projection algorithm. The imaging results agree well with the histological structure of the eyeball and show a high imaging contrast.     

Laser-based photoacoustic ammonia sensors for industrial applications

An industrial trace-ammonia sensor based on photoacoustic spectroscopy and CO₂ lasers has been developed for measuring ammonia with a 1σ detection limit of 220 parts-per-trillion (ppt) in an integration time of 30 s. The instrument response time for measuring ammonia was 200 s, limited by adsorption effects due to the polar nature of ammonia. The minimum detectable fractional absorbance was 2.0×10^-7, and the minimum normalized detectable absorption coefficient for this system was 2.4×10^-7 W cm^-1/z. The 9R(30) transition of the CO₂ laser at 9.22 μm with 2 W of output power was used to probe the strong sR(5,K) multiplet of ammonia at the same wavelength. This sensor was demonstrated with an optically multiplexed configuration for simultaneous measurement in four cells. Received: 3 April 2002 / Revised version: 31 May 2002 / Published online: 21 August 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +1-310/458-0171, E-mail: webber@pranalytica.com     

Infrared-laser photoacoustic spectroscopy

This paper reviews the applications of IR-laser photoacoustics to trace-gas monitoring as well as to spectroscopic studies on absorbing liquids.In the first part we present a stationary, dual-beam CO-laser and a mobile CO₂-laser photoacoustic system which have both been applied to the monitoring of various gaseous pollutants. Emphasis is put on selectivity, sensitivity and on temporal resolution. Novel cell designs and experimental techniques and an iterative procedure for the analysis of photoacoustic spectra of multicomponent mixtures are introduced. New results are presented for measurements on car and industrial exhausts as well as on ambient air.The second part is devoted to theoretical and experimental photoacoustic studies on strongly absorbing liquids, in particular on the investigation of different boundary conditions. A characteristic enhancement of the photoacoustic signal in the liquid is obtained if a liquid or solid surface layer is present. This new phenomenon permits the analysis of surface films with a thickness of ⩾ 1 μm. Furthermore, the photoacoustic in-situ monitoring of the polymerization process on a liquid surface is presented for the first time.     

Double-illumination photoacoustic microscopy

Recent developments of optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) have improved its spatial resolution and imaging speed. However, the penetration depth of OR-PAM is still limited to ~1 mm in tissue, owing to the strong tissue scattering. Here, we have developed double-illumination PAM (DI-PAM), which illuminates the sample from both top and bottom sides simultaneously. Through phantom and in vivo experiments, we have demonstrated for thin targets that DI-PAM has a penetration depth of ~2 mm in tissue at 532 nm and a focal zone of 260 μm, both significant improvements over traditional reflection or transmission-mode OR-PAM.     

Longitudinal resonant spectrophone for CO-laser photoacoustic spectroscopy

A photoacoustic (PA) system for monitoring gaseous air pollutants absorbing in the CO-laser range is presented. The characteristics of the CO laser and the interference caused by water-vapor absorption demand a special design of the PA cell and experimental setup. The optimum cell design was found by numerical simulation of the acoustic properties of various cell geometries. For this purpose a model using infinitesimal analogue acoustic impedances was developed. Based on a matrix formalism for fourterminals, a computer program was applied that permits the calculation of the frequency response of the PA signal amplitude at any position within a one-dimensional PA cell. Excellent agreement with experimental data is obtained. As a result, a new design for an acoustically resonant spectrophone with improved properties is presented. The response of the cell with aQ-factor of 52, operated at 555 Hz, is 2000 Pa cm/W.     

Quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy

A new approach to detecting a weak photoacoustic signal in a gas medium is described. Instead of a gas-filled resonant acoustic cavity, the sound energy is accumulated in a high- Q crystal element. Feasibility experiments utilizing a quartz-watch tuning fork demonstrate a sensitivity of 1.2x10(-7) cm(-1) W/ radicalHz . Potential further developments and applications of this technique are discussed.     

光声光谱技术在测量光谱响应特性方面的应用

用光声光谱技术测量光电探测器的相对光谱响应特性,以高灵敏度的光声池(池内装有吸收系数约为1的碳黑)作为参考探测器,具有较好的波长无选择性。用碳黑监测光源功率,减少光源功率起伏误差。采用二次测量归一化方法避免了分束器的影响。实验测得了比较准确的相对光谱响应特性曲线,为研究光电探测器的特性提供了一种可行的方法。     

High total variation-based method for sparse-view photoacoustic reconstruction

We propose a novel method by combining the total variation（TV） with the high-degree TV（HDTV） to improve the reconstruction quality of sparse-view sampling photoacoustic imaging（PAI）. A weighing function is adaptively updated in an iterative way to combine the solutions of the TV and HDTV minimizations. The fast iterative shrinkage/thresholding algorithm is implemented to solve both the TV and the HDTV minimizations with better convergence rate. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority and efficiency of the proposed method on sparse-view PAI. In vitro experiments also illustrate that the method can be used in practical sparse-view PAI.     

Nonlinear photothermal and photoacoustic processes for crack detection

We show that, using the thermal and mechanical nonlinearities of cracks, it is possible to produce nonlinear effects in the process of thermoelastic laser-generation of sound at the surface of a metallic sample. Two independent laser bursts centered on two different frequencies f₁ and f₂ are focused on the same spot, which can be close or distant form an artificial surface crack. By recording the acoustic response of the sample, frequency spectra obtained at different spot distances from the crack are compared. We observe that the frequency components resulting from the nonlinear process of frequency mixing (f₁+f₂, 2f₁, 2f₂, ...) are detectable for a generation on the crack but are absent out of the crack. Possible future improvements and other opportunities of crack imaging or non destructive testing methods based on these nonlinear processes are discussed.     

An infrared photoacoustic spectrometer

A single-beam dispersive photoacoustic spectrometer system usable in the infrared range is described. A carbon rod source was used with a monochromator, based on a Perkin-Elmer Model 421 bed and Model 621 interchange modified to contain only 6 reflective surfaces, driven by a computer-controlled step drive. Useful source-compensated spectra of solids were recorded in the 4000-880 cm⁻¹ range.