An Efficient Numerical Algorithm for the Inversion of an Integral Transform Arising in Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

We present an efficient and novel numerical algorithm for inversion of transforms arising in imaging modalities such as ultrasound imaging, thermoacoustic and photoacoustic tomography, intravascular imaging, non-destructive testing, and radar imaging with circular acquisition geometry. Our algorithm is based on recently discovered explicit inversion formulas for circular and elliptical Radon transforms with radially partial data derived by Ambartsoumian, Gouia-Zarrad, Lewis and by Ambartsoumian and Krishnan. These inversion formulas hold when the support of the function lies on the inside (relevant in ultrasound imaging, thermoacoustic and photoacoustic tomography, non-destructive testing), outside (relevant in intravascular imaging), both inside and outside (relevant in radar imaging) of the acquisition circle. Given the importance of such inversion formulas in several new and emerging imaging modalities, an efficient numerical inversion algorithm is of tremendous topical interest. The novelty of our non-iterative numerical inversion approach is that the entire scheme can be pre-processed and used repeatedly in image reconstruction, leading to a very fast algorithm. Several numerical simulations are presented showing the robustness of our algorithm.