Energy compensated synthetic aperture focusing technique for photoacoustic microscopy.

We report an adaptive energy-compensated synthetic aperture focusing technique (eC-SAFT) for improving the imaging performance of photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) in terms of depth of field (DOF), spatial resolution (both axial and lateral), and SNR. In addition to coherency and time-delay (in conventional SAFT), our beamforming-based reconstruction algorithm takes into account acoustic energy loss-a primary physical parameter in acoustic wave propagation-following Beer-Lambert's law. Experimental validation studies were performed in tissue-mimicking (Agar) phantoms, complex leaf veins, and chicken breast tissues. Results demonstrate that our proposed eC-SAFT+CF outperforms conventional SAFT+CF to improve axial resolution (up to ), lateral resolution (up to ), SNR (up to ) and CR (up to ).