Circular phase shift migration based photoacoustic computational tomography

Abstract

Abstract In the recent several decades, photoacoustic technique has proved to be capable of noninvasive biomedical imaging with scalable spatial resolution and high penetration depth. To achieve faithful image reconstruction, various method has been proposed, such as back projection, phase shift migration, model-based method, etc. These methods have simple implementations in homogeneous media, whereas in the cases of heterogeneous media (e.g., layered media), complicated modifications with respect to wave propagation at layer interface are always necessary. Here, we propose a frequency domain algorithm extension of phase shift migration in polar coordinates, which is obtained by making second order approximation to the optoacoustic point spread function in cylindrical coordinates and thereafter step by step wavenumber-frequency domain wave field extrapolation along the axial direction. Theoretical simulation and phantom experimental results demonstrate that the proposed circular phase shift migration method can well solve the layered heterogeneous reconstructive problem without modifying the wave propagation model. The acoustic diffraction limited acoustic resolution (up to 225 μm) and high imaging SNR (at least 16 dB) are obtained.