Enhancement of photoacoustic tomography in the tissue with speed-of-sound variance using ultrasound computed tomography**Projection supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2012CB921504), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11422439, 11274167, and 11274171), and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education, China (Grant No. 20120091110001).

Abstract

The speed-of-sound variance will decrease the imaging quality of photoacoustic tomography in acoustically inhomogeneous tissue. In this study, ultrasound computed tomography is combined with photoacoustic tomography to enhance the photoacoustic tomography in this situation. The speed-of-sound information is recovered by ultrasound computed tomography. Then, an improved delay-and-sum method is used to reconstruct the image from the photoacoustic signals. The simulation results validate that the proposed method can obtain a better photoacoustic tomography than the conventional method when the speed-of-sound variance is increased. In addition, the influences of the speed-of-sound variance and the fan-angle on the image quality are quantitatively explored to optimize the image scheme. The proposed method has a good performance even when the speed-of-sound variance reaches 14.2%. Furthermore, an optimized fan angle is revealed, which can keep the good image quality with a low cost of hardware. This study has a potential value in extending the biomedical application of photoacoustic tomography.