A pulsed laser diode system operating at $905\mathrm{nm}$ has been developed for the generation of photoacoustic signals in tissue. It was evaluated by measuring the photoacoustic waveforms generated in a blood vessel phantom comprising three dye-filled $({\mu }_a=1{\mathrm{mm}}^{-1})$ tubes of diameters $120–580\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{m}$ immersed to a maximum depth of $9\mathrm{mm}$ in a turbid liquid $({\mu }_s^{\prime }=1{\mathrm{mm}}^{-1})$ . The system was then combined with a cylindrical scanning system to obtain two-dimensional images of a tissue phantom. The signal-to-noise ratio of the detected signals in both cases and the image contrast in the latter suggest that such a system could provide a compact and inexpensive alternative to current excitation sources for superficial imaging applilcations.