%0 Journal Article %T Optoacoustic signal excitation with a tone-burst of short pulses %A D. Razansky %A X.L. De¨¢n-Ben %J Archive of "Photoacoustics". %D 2018 %R 10.1016/j.pacs.2018.06.001 %X Individual light pulses with durations in the nanosecond range are most often employed in biomedical optoacoustic imaging. In this excitation regime, ultra-wideband acoustic responses are generated from tissues that cannot be efficiently captured with ultrasound transducers having a limited detection bandwidth. Here, we analyse a narrowband optoacoustic signal excitation mechanism consisting of a tone-burst of multiple equally-delayed pulses. The signal generation efficiency of single-pulse versus tone-burst excitation is compared for normal light exposure levels in the linear optoacoustic signal generation regime as well as when considering non-linearities associated with temperature increase or absorption saturation. The signal-to-noise ratio of the excited signals is also experimentally compared using a highly-absorbing ink phantom %U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6039968/