Nguyen Ho Nhu Y, Steenbergen Wiendelt
Biomedical Photonic Imaging Group, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Biomed Opt Express. 2019 Jun 3;10(7):3124-3138. doi: 10.1364/BOE.10.003124. eCollection 2019 Jul 1.
The occurrence of artifacts is a major challenge in photoacoustic imaging. The artifacts negatively affect the quality and reliability of the images. An approach using multi-wavelength excitation has previously been reported for in-plane artifact identification. Yet, out-of-plane artifacts cannot be tackled with this method. Here we propose a new method using ultrasound transducer array displacement. By displacing the ultrasound transducer array axially, we can de-correlate out-of-plane artifacts with in-plane image features and thus remove them. Combining this new method with the previous one allows us to remove potentially completely both in-plane and out-of-plane artifacts in photoacoustic imaging. We experimentally demonstrate this with experiments in phantoms as well as in vivo.
伪像的出现是光声成像中的一个主要挑战。这些伪像会对图像的质量和可靠性产生负面影响。此前已有报道一种使用多波长激发的方法用于平面内伪像识别。然而，这种方法无法解决平面外伪像。在此，我们提出一种使用超声换能器阵列位移的新方法。通过轴向位移超声换能器阵列，我们可以使平面外伪像与平面内图像特征去相关，从而消除它们。将这种新方法与之前的方法相结合，使我们能够在光声成像中潜在地完全消除平面内和平面外伪像。我们通过在体模以及体内的实验对此进行了实验验证。
