Advanced photoacoustic image reconstruction using the k-Wave toolbox

Abstract

Reconstructing images from measured time domain signals is an essential step in tomography-mode photoacoustic imaging. However, in practice, there are many complicating factors that make it difficult to obtain high-resolution images. These include incomplete or undersampled data, filtering effects, acoustic and optical attenuation, and uncertainties in the material parameters. Here, the processing and image reconstruction steps routinely used by the Photoacoustic Imaging Group at University College London are discussed. These include correction for acoustic and optical attenuation, spatial resampling, material parameter selection, image reconstruction, and log compression. The effect of each of these steps is demonstrated using a representative in vivo dataset. All of the algorithms discussed form part of the open-source k-Wave toolbox (available from http://www.k-wave.org)

    Similar works