Photoacoustic (PA) imaging technology combines the advantages of optical imaging and ultrasound imaging, showing great potential in biomedical applications. Many preclinical studies and clinical applications urgently require fast, high-quality, low-cost and portable imaging system. Translating advanced image reconstruction algorithms into hardware implementations is highly desired. However, existing iterative PA image reconstructions, although exhibit higher accuracy than delay-and-sum algorithm, suffer from high computational cost. In this paper, we introduce a model-based hardware acceleration architecture based on superposed Wave (s-Wave) for palm-size PA tomography (palm-PAT), aiming at enhancing both the speed and performance of image reconstruction at a much lower system cost. To achieve this, we propose an innovative data reuse method that significantly reduces hardware storage resource consumption. We conducted experiments by FPGA implementation of the algorithm, using both phantoms and in vivo human finger data to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that our proposed architecture can substantially reduce system cost while maintaining high imaging performance. The hardware-accelerated implementation of the model-based algorithm achieves a speedup of up to approximately 270 times compared to the CPU, while the corresponding energy efficiency ratio is improved by more than 2700 times.
Filtered backprojection (FBP) is an efficient and popular class of tomographic image reconstruction methods. In photoacoustic tomography, these algorithms are based on theoretically exact analytic inversion formulas which results in accurate reconstructions. However, photoacoustic measurement data are often incomplete (limited detection view and sparse sampling), which results in artefacts in the images reconstructed with FBP. In addition to that, properties such as directivity of the acoustic detectors are not accounted for in standard FBP, which affects the reconstruction quality, too. To ac…
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute（伦斯勒理工学院）；Michigan State University（密歇根州立大学）
Photoacoustic tomography seeks to reconstruct an acoustic initial pressure distribution from the measurement of the ultrasound waveforms. Conventional methods assume a-prior knowledge of the sound speed distribution, which practically is unknown. One way to circumvent the issue is to simultaneously reconstruct both the acoustic initial pressure and speed. In this article, we develop a novel data-driven method that integrates an advanced deep neural network through model-based iteration. The image of the initial pressure is significantly improved in our numerical simulation.
We have developed a multimodal photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) microscope combined with swept source optical coherence tomography for in vivo, non-contact retinal imaging. Building on the proven strength of multiwavelength PARS imaging, the system is applied for estimating retinal oxygen saturation in the rat retina. The capability of the technology is demonstrated by imaging both microanatomy and the microvasculature of the retina in vivo. To our knowledge this is the first time a non-contact photoacoustic imaging technique is employed for in vivo oxygen saturation measurement in the reti…
The quality of the reconstructed photoacoustic image largely depends on the amount of photoacoustic (PA) boundary data available, which in turn is proportional to the number of detectors employed. In case of limited data (owing to less number of detectors due to cost/instrumentation constraints), the reconstructed PA images suffer from artifacts and are often noisy. In this work, for the first time, a deep learning based model was developed to super resolve and denoise the photoacoustic sinogram data. The proposed method was compared with existing nearest neighbor interpolation and wavelet bas…
For photoacoustic image reconstruction, certain parameters such as sensor positions and speed of sound have a major impact in the reconstruction process and must be carefully determined before data acquisition. Uncertainties in these parameters can lead to errors produced by a modeling mismatch, hindering the reconstruction process and severely affecting the resulting image quality. Therefore, in this work we study how modeling errors arising from uncertainty in sensor locations affect the images obtained by matrix model-based reconstruction algorithms based on time domain and frequency domain…
George Mason University（乔治梅森大学）；The MITRE Corporation（MITRE公司）
In photoacoustic tomography (PAT), the acoustic pressure waves produced by optical excitation are measured by an array of detectors and used to reconstruct an image. Sparse spatial sampling and limited-view detection are two common challenges faced in PAT. Reconstructing from incomplete data using standard methods results in severe streaking artifacts and blurring. We propose a modified convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture termed Dense Dilation UNet (DD-UNet) for correcting artifacts in 3D PAT. The DD-Net leverages the benefits of dense connectivity and dilated convolutions to impro…
George Mason University（乔治梅森大学）；The MITRE Corporation（MITRE公司）
Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is a nonionizing imaging modality capable of acquiring high contrast and resolution images of optical absorption at depths greater than traditional optical imaging techniques. Practical considerations with instrumentation and geometry limit the number of available acoustic sensors and their view of the imaging target, which result in significant image reconstruction artifacts degrading image quality. Iterative reconstruction methods can be used to reduce artifacts but are computationally expensive. In this work, we propose a novel deep learning approach termed pi…
Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) combines the optical contrast of optical imaging and the penetrability of sonography. In this work, we develop a novel PACT system to provide real-time imaging, which is achieved by a 120-elements ultrasound array only using a single data acquisition (DAQ) channel. To reduce the channel number of DAQ, we superimpose 30 nearby channels' signals together in the analog domain, and shrinking to 4 channels of data (120/30=4). Furthermore, a four-to-one delay-line module is designed to combine these four channels' data into one channel before entering the sin…
Idier et al. [IEEE Trans. Comput. Imaging 4(1), 2018] propose a method which achieves superresolution in the microscopy setting by leveraging random speckle illumination and knowledge about statistical second order moments for the illumination patterns and model noise. This is achieved without any assumptions on the sparsity of the imaged object. In this paper, we show that their technique can be extended to photoacoustic tomography. We propose a simple algorithm for doing the reconstruction which only requires a small number of linear algebra steps. It is therefore much faster than the iterat…
In photoacoustic tomography (PAT) with flat sensor, we routinely encounter two types of limited data. The first is due to using a finite sensor and is especially perceptible if the region of interest is large relative to the sensor or located farther away from the sensor. In this paper, we focus on the second type caused by a varying sensitivity of the sensor to the incoming wavefront direction which can be modelled as binary i.e. by a cone of sensitivity. Such visibility conditions result, in the Fourier domain, in a restriction of both the image and the data to a bow-tie, akin to the one cor…
Scalable photoacoustic tomography implementations accounting for the spatial impulse response of transducers
Université de Toulouse, CNRS（图卢兹大学）；UPS（艾克斯-马赛大学）；Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille（索邦大学）；Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Inserm, Laboratoire d’Imagerie Biomédicale, LIB（科学技术研究局）；Agency for Science, Technology and Research（南洋理工大学）；Nanyang Technological University（新加坡国立大学）；National University of Singapore
Histological images are critical in the diagnosis and treatment of cancers. Unfortunately, the current method for capturing these microscopy images require resource intensive tissue preparation that delays diagnosis for many days to a few weeks. To streamline this process, clinicians are limited to assessing small macroscopically representative subsets of tissues. Here, we present a combined photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) microscope and swept source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system designed to circumvent these diagnostic limitations. The proposed multimodal microscope provides…
ShanghaiTech University（上海科技大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a non-invasive imaging modality that detects the ultrasound signal generated from tissue with light excitation. Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) uses unfocused large-area light to illuminate the target with ultrasound transducer array for PA signal detection. Limited-view issue could cause a low-quality image in PACT due to the limitation of geometric condition. The model-based method is used to resolve this problem, which contains different regularization. To adapt fast and high-quality reconstruction of limited-view PA data, in this paper, a model-based…
Revisiting the joint estimation of initial pressure and speed-of-sound distributions in photoacoustic computed tomography with consideration of canonical object constraints
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)（德国癌症研究中心（DKFZ））；Heidelberg University（海德堡大学）；Heidelberg University Hospital（海德堡大学医院）
Purpose: Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is a novel imaging technique that can spatially resolve both morphological and functional tissue properties, such as the vessel topology and tissue oxygenation. While this capacity makes PAT a promising modality for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of various diseases, a current drawback is the limited field-of-view (FoV) provided by the conventionally applied 2D probes. Methods: In this paper, we present a novel approach to 3D reconstruction of PAT data (Tattoo tomography) that does not require an external tracking system and can smoothly be integ…
Coordinate-based Speed of Sound Recovery for Aberration-Corrected Photoacoustic Computed Tomography
Northwestern University（西北大学）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI)（NSF-模拟斯通AI天空研究所（SkAI））
University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
Biomedical photoacoustic tomography, which can provide high resolution 3D soft tissue images based on the optical absorption, has advanced to the stage at which translation from the laboratory to clinical settings is becoming possible. The need for rapid image formation and the practical restrictions on data acquisition that arise from the constraints of a clinical workflow are presenting new image reconstruction challenges. There are many classical approaches to image reconstruction, but ameliorating the effects of incomplete or imperfect data through the incorporation of accurate priors is c…
Fast algorithms enabling optimization and deep learning for photoacoustic tomography in a circular detection geometry
Research Unit of Mathematical Sciences, University of Oulu（奥卢大学数学科学研究所）；Department of Computer Science, University College London（伦敦大学学院计算机科学系）；Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学数学系）；Department of Technical Physics, University of Eastern Finland（东部芬兰大学技术物理系）
