High frame rate (∼3Hz) circular photoacoustic tomography using single-element ultrasound transducer aided with deep learning.

Abstract

.SignificanceIn circular scanning photoacoustic tomography (PAT), it takes several minutes to generate an image of acceptable quality, especially with a single-element ultrasound transducer (UST). The imaging speed can be enhanced by faster scanning (with high repetition rate light sources) and using multiple-USTs. However, artifacts arising from the sparse signal acquisition and low signal-to-noise ratio at higher scanning speeds limit the imaging speed. Thus, there is a need to improve the imaging speed of the PAT systems without hampering the quality of the PAT image.AimTo improve the frame rate (or imaging speed) of the PAT system by using deep learning (DL).ApproachFor improving the frame rate (or imaging speed) of the PAT system, we propose a novel U-Net-based DL framework to reconstruct PAT images from fast scanning data.ResultsThe efficiency of the network was evaluated on both single- and multiple-UST-based PAT systems. Both phantom and in vivo imaging demonstrate that the network can improve the imaging frame rate by approximately sixfold in single-UST-based PAT systems and by approximately twofold in multi-UST-based PAT systems.ConclusionsWe proposed an innovative method to improve the frame rate (or imaging speed) by using DL and with this method, the fastest frame rate of imaging is achieved without hampering the quality of the reconstructed image.