Open AccessPhotoacoustic tomography from weak and noisy signals by using a pulse decomposition algorithm in the time-domain
Author(s) -
Liangbing Liu,
Chao Tao,
Xiaojun Liu,
Mingxi Deng,
Senhua Wang,
Jun Liu
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.23.026969
Subject(s) - imaging phantom , signal to noise ratio (imaging) , optics , signal (programming language) , photoacoustic effect , noise (video) , time domain , iterative reconstruction , pulse (music) , photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , laser , projection (relational algebra) , tomography , materials science , algorithm , computer science , attenuation coefficient , physics , image (mathematics) , computer vision , detector , programming language
Photoacoustic tomography is a promising and rapidly developed methodology of biomedical imaging. It confronts an increasing urgent problem to reconstruct the image from weak and noisy photoacoustic signals, owing to its high benefit in extending the imaging depth and decreasing the dose of laser exposure. Based on the time-domain characteristics of photoacoustic signals, a pulse decomposition algorithm is proposed to reconstruct a photoacoustic image from signals with low signal-to-noise ratio. In this method, a photoacoustic signal is decomposed as the weighted summation of a set of pulses in the time-domain. Images are reconstructed from the weight factors, which are directly related to the optical absorption coefficient. Both simulation and experiment are conducted to test the performance of the method. Numerical simulations show that when the signal-to-noise ratio is -4 dB, the proposed method decreases the reconstruction error to about 17%, in comparison with the conventional back-projection method. Moreover, it can produce acceptable images even when the signal-to-noise ratio is decreased to -10 dB. Experiments show that, when the laser influence level is low, the proposed method achieves a relatively clean image of a hair phantom with some well preserved pattern details. The proposed method demonstrates imaging potential of photoacoustic tomography in expanding applications.