Photoacoustic signal enhancement: towards utilization of very low-cost laser diodes in photoacoustic imaging

Abstract

In practice, photoacoustic (PA) waves generated with cost-effective, low-energy laser diodes, are weak and almost buried in noise. Reconstruction of an artifact-free PA image from noisy measurements requires an effective denoising technique. Averaging techniques are widely used to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the weak PA signals but the process is time-consuming and in case of very low SNR measurements, hundreds/thousands of data acquisition epochs needed to provide the required data In this study, we propose to use adaptive denoising methodology in which adaptive line enhancers (ALE) has been embedded for increasing the SNR of PA signals in very low-cost PA systems. Our results show that the proposed method increases the SNR of the PA signals with fewer acquisitions more efficiently, compared to common averaging techniques. Consequently, PA imaging with this method can be conducted considerably faster.