Objective: To visualize the vasculature of mouse cerebral cortex separately and together in response to acupuncture at Yanglingquan acupoint (GB34) and intravenous administration of Au nanoparticles using photoacoustic tomography (PAT). Methods:PAT provides an emerging noninvasive tool to extract functional information such as hemoglobin of biological tissue with highresolution In this work, PAT was utilized to obtain images of in vivo mouse cerebral cortex over time, and to monitor the changes of optical absorption of living mouse brain vasculature separately and together in response to Au nanoparticles injection and acupuncture Results:Photoacoustic data from three groups of mice showed that with contrast agents injection or acupuncture, the absorption enhancement ratios of the cortical vasculature were 23.87% and 38.56%, respectively With both contrast agent injection and acupuncture, the light absorption of the cortical vasculature was increased by 66.75% Conclusion: he achieved results exhibit that the optical absorption of in vivo mouse cerebral cortex over time can be clearly monitored by PAT The optical absorption enhancement induced by combined method of acupuncture and Au nanoparticles injection was much greater than that by any one method alone The results also indicate that the integration of acupuncture and contrast agents would greatly enhance the photoacoustic imaging contrast