Biomedical Photoacoustic Imaging With Unknown Spatially Distributed Ultrasound Sensor Array.

OBJECTIVE

With the growth of interest in different medical study on biological function, non-invasive photoacoustic imaging of biological tissue attracts the interests for researchers. To eliminate the limited angle effect of photoacoustic imaging based on ultrasound linear array, spatially distributed ultrasound sensor array is applied. The accurate sensor array position determines the quality of the imaging results. In this study, we proposed three methods based on photoacoustic and ultrasound signals to enhance the imaging quality using a 256-element full-ring array.

METHODS

Groups of photoacoustic and ultrasound signals are used to regress the position of each element sensor.

RESULT

In phantom study and mouse brain study, photoacoustic imaging results can both yield details clearly with average error rate of less than 1% (50 [Formula: see text]).

CONCLUSION

The performance of our three methods have proved that they can be potentially applied to other ultrasound-based medical imaging studies with unknown distributed positions of sensor array to enhance the imaging quality.

SIGNIFICANCE

The proposed methods can contribute to precise biomedical imaging with unknown distributed positions of sensor array in different application scenarios.