title: Photoacoustic tomography of biological tissues with high cross-section resolution: reconstruction and experiment.
abstract: A modified back-projection approach deduced from an exact reconstruction solution was applied to our photoacoustic tomography of the optical absorption in biological tissues. Pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser (4.7 ns FWHM at 789.2 nm) were employed to generate a distribution of photoacoustic sources in a sample. The sources were detected by a wide-band nonfocused ultrasonic transducer at different positions around the imaging cross section perpendicular to the axis of the laser irradiation. Reconstructed images of phantoms made from chicken breast tissue agreed well with the structures of the samples. The resolution in the imaging cross section was experimentally demonstrated to be better than 60 microm when a 10 MHz transducer (140% bandwidth at -60 dB) was employed, which was nearly diffraction limited by the detectable photoacoustic waves of the highest frequency.
authors.affiliation: Optical Imaging Laboratory, Biomedical Engineering Program, Texas A&M University 3120 TAMU, College Station, Texas 77843-3120, USA.
authors.forename: Xueding
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Minghua
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Seiichirou
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yokoo
authors.forename: Edward S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Fry
authors.forename: Lihong V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007834:Lasers; D015233:Models, Statistical; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D013997:Time Factors