Open AccessConvolutional neural network for resolution enhancement and noise reduction in acoustic resolution photoacoustic microscopy
Author(s) -
Arunima Sharma,
Manojit Pramanik
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.411257
Subject(s) - convolutional neural network , focus (optics) , resolution (logic) , microscopy , computer science , image resolution , image quality , artificial intelligence , optics , materials science , noise reduction , noise (video) , deep learning , acoustic microscopy , photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , computer vision , image (mathematics) , physics
In acoustic resolution photoacoustic microscopy (AR-PAM), a high numerical aperture focused ultrasound transducer (UST) is used for deep tissue high resolution photoacoustic imaging. There is a significant degradation of lateral resolution in the out-of-focus region. Improvement in out-of-focus resolution without degrading the image quality remains a challenge. In this work, we propose a deep learning-based method to improve the resolution of AR-PAM images, especially at the out of focus plane. A modified fully dense U-Net based architecture was trained on simulated AR-PAM images. Applying the trained model on experimental images showed that the variation in resolution is ∼10% across the entire imaging depth (∼4 mm) in the deep learning-based method, compared to ∼180% variation in the original PAM images. Performance of the trained network on in vivo rat vasculature imaging further validated that noise-free, high resolution images can be obtained using this method.