title: Full-wave iterative image reconstruction in photoacoustic tomography with acoustically inhomogeneous media.
abstract: Existing approaches to image reconstruction in photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) with acoustically heterogeneous media are limited to weakly varying media, are computationally burdensome, and/or cannot effectively mitigate the effects of measurement data incompleteness and noise. In this work, we develop and investigate a discrete imaging model for PACT that is based on the exact photoacoustic (PA) wave equation and facilitates the circumvention of these limitations. A key contribution of the work is the establishment of a procedure to implement a matched forward and backprojection operator pair associated with the discrete imaging model, which permits application of a wide-range of modern image reconstruction algorithms that can mitigate the effects of data incompleteness and noise. The forward and backprojection operators are based on the k-space pseudospectral method for computing numerical solutions to the PA wave equation in the time domain. The developed reconstruction methodology is investigated by use of both computer-simulated and experimental PACT measurement data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130 USA.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.forename: Lihong V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Mark A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Anastasio
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D000882:Haplorhini; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008954:Models, Biological; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D061088:Photoacoustic Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D012886:Skull / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D014054:Tomography / Q000379:methods*