A comparative study on water and dry coupling in photoacoustic tomography of the finger joints

We present a systematical study on comparison between water and dry coupling in photoacoustic tomography of the humanfinger joints.Compared to the direct water immersion of thefinger for water coupling,the dry coupling is realized through a transparent PDMSfilm-based water bag,which ensures water-free contact with the skin.The results obtained suggest that the dry cou-pling provides image quality comparable to that by water coupling while eliminating the wrin-kling of thefinger joint caused by the water immersion.In addition,the dry coupling offers more stable hemodynamic images than the water coupling as the water immersion of thefinger joint causes reduction in blood vessel size.