The following is a non-comprehensive illustration of an encoding of a hybrid Photoacoustic/Ultrasound coupled acquisition modality with images acquired over time where the transducer is mounted on a tomographic frame. The acquisition unit is spatially translated to form a three-dimensional volume representation of the imaged object

At each of M Temporal Positions, N optical excitation wavelengths are applied in rapid succession and Photoacoustic Images are acquired for each wavelength. The Temporal Position Time Offset is incremented upon repetition of the same volume spatial scanning pattern. Ultrasound images are also acquired with the timing of the ultrasound acquisitions aligned with the scan positions In this example, the data from the Photoacoustic device and the Ultrasound device share the same DICOM Frame of Reference for each SOP Class Instance.