Freehand Photoacoustic Tomography For 3d Angiography Using Local Gradient Information

Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is capable of imaging optical absorption in depths beyond the diffusion limit. As blood is one of the main absorbers in tissue, one important application is the visualization of vasculature, which can provide important clues for diagnosing diseases like cancer. While the state-of-the-art work in photoacoustic 3D angiography has focused on computed tomography systems involving complex setups, we propose an approach based on optically tracking a freehand linear ultrasound probe that can be smoothly integrated into the clinical workflow. To this end, we present a method for calibration of a PAT system using an N-wire phantom specifically designed for PAT and show how to use local gradient information in the 3D reconstructed volume to significantly enhance the signal. According to experiments performed with a tissue mimicking intralipid phantom, the signal-to-noise ratio, contrast and contrast-to-noise ratio measured in the full field of view of the linear probe can be improved by factors of 1.7 +/- 0.7, 14.6 +/- 5.8 and 2.8 +/- 1.2 respectively, when comparing the post envelope detection reconstructed 3D volume with the processed one. Qualitative validation performed in tissue mimicking gelatin phantoms further showed good agreement of the reconstructed vasculature with corresponding structures extracted from X-ray computed tomographies. As our method provides high contrast 3D images of the vasculature despite a low hardware complexity its potential for clinical application is high.