MRI Information-Based Correction and Restoration of Photoacoustic Tomography.

As an emerging molecular imaging modality, Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) is capable of mapping tissue physiological metabolism and exogenous contrast agent information with high specificity. Due to its ultrasonic detection mechanism, the precise localization of targeted lesions has long been a challenge for PAT imaging. The poor soft-tissue contrast of the PAT image makes this process difficult and inaccurate. To meet this challenge, in this study, we first make use of the rich and clear structural information brought about by another advanced imaging modality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), to assist organ segmentation and correct for the light fluence attenuation of PAT. We demonstrate improved feature visibility and enhanced localization of endogenous and exogenous agents in the fluence corrected PAT images. Compared with PAT-based methods, the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of our MRI-assisted method increases by 29.1% in live animal experiments. Furthermore, we show that the co-registered MRI image can also be incorporated into PAT image restoration, and achieves improved anatomical landscape and soft-tissue contrast (CNR increased by 25.36%) while preserving similar spatial resolution. This PAT-MRI combination provides excellent structural, functional and molecular images of the subject, and may enable more comprehensive analysis of various preclinical research applications.