title: Three-dimensional photoacoustic tomography based on the focal-line concept.
abstract: A full ring ultrasonic array-based photoacoustic tomography system was recently developed for small animal brain imaging. The 512-element array is cylindrically focused in the elevational direction, and can acquire a two-dimensional (2D) image in 1.6 s. In this letter, we demonstrate the three-dimensional (3D) imaging capability of this system. A novel 3D reconstruction algorithm was developed based on the focal-line concept. Compared to 3D images acquired simply by stacking a series of 2D images, the 3D focal-line reconstruction method renders images with much less artifacts, and improves the elevational resolution by 30% and the signal-to-noise ratio by two times. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was first validated by numerical simulations and then demonstrated with a hair phantom experiment and an ex vivo mouse embryo experiment.
authors.affiliation: Washington University in St. Louis, Optical Imaging Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Zijian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Konstantin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maslov
authors.forename: Andres
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aguirre
authors.forename: Quing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Percival
authors.forename: Lihong V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006197:Hair / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D061088:Photoacoustic Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D014054:Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000379:methods*