Three-dimensional high-resolution information fusion method for optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy using principal component analysis transform

Abstract

As a new imaging method with high optical contrast and large ultrasonic detection depth, photoacoustic imaging breaks through the barrier between resolution and imaging depth of traditional optical imaging technology, and obtains rapid development. As an important branch, photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) imaging technology inherits the advantages of photoacoustic imaging technology. Using optical focusing imaging mode, high contrast and high resolution biological tissue structure, molecular and functional imaging can be realized, which has potential application value in neuroscience, ophthalmology, vascular biology and dermatology. However, PAM relies on close optical focusing to achieve high resolution imaging effect. The traditional PAM usually relies on high NA objective lens for laser focusing, which limits the depth of field (DoF) size of the imaging system while obtaining high lateral resolution, so that PAM has limitations in three-dimensional imaging and obtaining information of different depth directions. Moreover, the sharp decline of spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio in the defocus area will also affect the accuracy of quantitative analysis of tissue morphology and structure. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a three-dimensional photoacoustic information fusion method based on principal component analysis fusion algorithm. Virtual photoacoustic microscopy platform was used to obtain three-dimensional vascular data with different focuses. The B-scan slices at the same position of three-dimensional photoacoustic data with different focuses are fused in turn. The fused slices are recombined to reconstruct high-resolution photoacoustic data with large depth of field. The results show that this method can achieve depth of field extension while maintaining the high resolution advantages of photoacoustic microscopy.