title: Photoacoustic tomography of a rat cerebral cortex with a ring-based ultrasonic virtual point detector.
abstract: We image a rat cerebral cortex in situ by using a ring-based ultrasonic virtual point detector developed previously. Compared to the image generated by a finite-aperture detector, the image generated by the virtual point detector has a uniformly distributed resolution throughout the imaged area, owing to the lack of aperture effect of the ultrasonic detector. At the periphery of the image, the signal-to-noise ratio of the image obtained by the virtual point detector is also better than that of a finite-aperture detector. Furthermore, the virtual point detector can be scanned inside the brain to improve the local signal-to-noise ratio.
authors.affiliation: Washington University in Saint Louis, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Optical Imaging Laboratory, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130, USA.
authors.forename: Xinmai
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Lihong V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation; D000818:Animals; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D041622:Tomography, Optical / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D014463:Ultrasonography