A Digital-Enhanced Chip-Scale Photoacoustic Sensor System for Blood Core Temperature Monitoring and In Vivo Imaging

Monolithic integration of photoacoustic (PA) sensor with compact size, lightweight, and low power consumption is attractive to be implemented on wearable medical devices for in vivo blood metabolic sensing and imaging. This work presents a miniaturized chip-scale mixed-signal photoacoustic sensor system which can achieve coherent lock-in function to detect weak target PA signals noninvasively at in vivo scenarios of poor signal to noise ratio (SNR) and strong interferences. A low-noise amplifier (LNA), a 3rd order Butterworth low-pass filter (LPF), and a variable-gain amplifier (VGA) chain with 10 MHz cutoff frequency are implemented on-chip to attain a high-quality sensing performance with 50-dB dynamic range. A Gilbert-cell type multiplier is integrated on-chip to fulfill the coherent lock-in process on acquired PA signals in a closed-loop process with an embedded FPGA system. Fabricated in 65-nm CMOS technology, the prototype PA sensor system demonstrated 50 μV sensitivity. The functions of the chip-scale PA sensor system enhanced by coherent lock-in process were validated through the experiments on temperature monitoring and vessel imaging. The PA receiver chip occupies an area of 0.6 mm
²
and consumes 20 mW at a 1.8-V supply.