Photo-acoustic tomography in a rotating measurement setting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel framework for photo-acoustic tomography that directly reconstructs optical absorption maps from ultrasound measurements in a rotating measurement setup, bypassing the traditional two-step process.

Contribution

It develops a unified reconstruction method for PAT in a rotating measurement setting, where optical and ultrasound data are integrated into a single step.

Findings

Direct absorption map reconstruction from ultrasound data.

Framework applicable to 2D and 3D rotating measurement setups.

Potential for improved imaging in practical PAT applications.

Abstract

Photo-acoustic tomography (PAT) aims to leverage the photo-acoustic coupling between optical absorption of light sources and ultrasound (US) emission to obtain high contrast reconstructions of optical parameters with the high resolution of sonic waves. Quantitative PAT often involves a two-step procedure: first the map of sonic emission is reconstructed from US boundary measurements; and second optical properties of biological tissues are evaluated. We consider here a practical measurement setting in which such a separation does not apply. We assume that the optical source and an array of ultrasonic transducers are mounted on a rotating frame (in two or three dimensions) so that the light source rotates at the same time as the US measurements are acquired. As a consequence, we no longer have the option to reconstruct a map of sonic emission corresponding to a given optical illumination. We propose here a framework where the two steps are combined into one and an absorption map is directly reconstructed from the available ultrasound measurements.