Abstract
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has been developed for various clinical and pre-clinical applications, and acquiring pre-beamformed channel data is necessary to reconstruct these images. However, accessing these pre-beamformed channel data requires custom hardware to enable parallel beamforming, and is available for a limited number of research ultrasound platforms. To broaden the impact of clinical PA imaging, our goal is to devise a new PA reconstruction approach that uses ultrasound post-beamformed radio frequency (RF) data rather than raw channel data, because this type of data is readily available in both clinical and research ultrasound systems. In our proposed Synthetic-aperture based photoacoustic re-beamforming (SPARE) approach, post-beamformed RF data from a clinical ultrasound scanner are considered as input data for an adaptive synthetic aperture beamforming algorithm. When receive focusing is applied prior to obtaining these data, the focal point is considered as a virtual element, and synthetic aperture beamforming is implemented assuming that the photoacoustic signals are received at the virtual element. The resolution and SNR obtained with the proposed method were compared to that obtained with conventional delay-and-sum beamforming with 99.87% and 91.56% agreement, respectively. In addition, we experimentally demonstrated feasibility with a pulsed laser diode setup. Results indicate that the post-beamformed RF data from any commercially available ultrasound platform can potentially be used to create PA images.
Highlights
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is an important tool for various clinical and pre-clinical applications [1], providing functional information by visualizing optical absorption properties, and offering great synergy with conventional ultrasound imaging, which delineates anatomical structures
Post-beamformed radio frequency (RF) data is readily available with several clinical and research ultrasound platforms, to broaden the impact of clinical PA imaging, our goal is to devise a new PA image reconstruction approach based on ultrasound RF data that has already been beamformed by the system
PA images using the proposed Synthetic-aperture based photoacoustic rebeamforming (SPARE) beamformer were similar to that from conventional PA beamforming from raw channel data
Summary
Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is an important tool for various clinical and pre-clinical applications [1], providing functional information by visualizing optical absorption properties, and offering great synergy with conventional ultrasound imaging, which delineates anatomical structures. Accessing pre-beamformed channel data requires custom hardware and parallel beamforming software, and is available for a limited number of research ultrasound platforms with dedicated channel data acquisition devices such as the Ultrasonix DAQ system [7]. These systems are generally expensive with fixed data transfer rates that prohibit high framerate, real-time imaging [8]. Software access to change the speed of sound is not common and when available, the range for this change is limited, making this option insufficient for PA beamforming. Post-beamformed radio frequency (RF) data is readily available with several clinical and research ultrasound platforms, to broaden the impact of clinical PA imaging, our goal is to devise a new PA image reconstruction approach based on ultrasound RF data that has already been beamformed by the system
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