Abstract
To form various images at multiple locations for achieving bright- and dark-illumination fields transformation and registration-free image fusion, we proposed a continuously-adjustable light-scanning handheld probe with overall size of 60 × 45 × 80 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> for photoacoustic imaging (PAI). It has a significant advantage for image acquisition under different illumination schemes using motor driving. Specifically, a light adjustment unit was designed to produce light spots, which is more compatible with ultrasonic transducer detection region. Afterwards, multiple PA images revealing diverse features with different optical illumination regions were acquired. Consequently, the fused image was obtained with higher SNR and fidelity than respective PA image. Furthermore, both phantom and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ex-vivo</i> experiments were conducted to evaluate imaging performance of the developed probe. Experimental results show that SNR of the fused PA image improves by 36.06% in agar-milk phantom and 44.69% in <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ex-vivo</i> chicken breast, respectively. Therefore, the proposed PAI handheld probe can achieve our goals well; the registration-free image fusion achieved by adaptive scanning strategy can perform better and demonstrate comprehensive features of the same imaging target.
Highlights
N OWADAYS, medical imaging technologies are developing very rapidly, among which photoacoustic imaging (PAI), an emerging non-invasive and non-ionizing imaging technique, attracts increasing attention in recent years [1]–[3]
In PAI, the chromogenic group in tissue is illuminated by a short-pulse laser, and the laser-induced pressure waves are detected by ultrasound transducers to reconstruct an image, which reveals the distribution of the optical absorbers at the region of interest (ROI) [4]–[6]
We proposed novel design of continuouslyadjustable light-scanning handheld probe for PAI, which can acquire multiple images using moving motor based on different illumination schemes, and can be suitable for single hand holding
Summary
N OWADAYS, medical imaging technologies are developing very rapidly, among which photoacoustic imaging (PAI), an emerging non-invasive and non-ionizing imaging technique, attracts increasing attention in recent years [1]–[3]. As for other medical imaging techniques: X-ray Imaging involves ionizing radiation and non-optimal sensitivity as well as specificity [10], [11]; Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) enhances contrast and spatial resolution with huge time consumption and expensiveness [12], [13]; Ultrasonic Imaging (US) is non-invasive and low-cost, but the image quality requires enhancement and the false positive rate is high [14] Compared to these state-of-the-art techniques, PAI is complementary to other imaging modalities in contrast to mechanism, penetration, spatial resolution, and temporal resolution [11] limitations such as high cost, bulky size, and mode-fixed illumination of current devices of PAI system have restricted further development in clinical application [15], [18]. Liu et al [21] developed a handheld volumetric PAI system with a central-holed 2D matrix aperture, achieving real-time 3D PAI for preclinical and clinical application All these previous works in regards to probe design only take dark-field illumination or dark-field illumination into consideration. Since each type of illumination still has its own advantages under certain circumstances, it is expected that PAI can achieve adjustable illumination modes within one probe in
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