GPU-accelerated two dimensional synthetic aperture focusing for photoacoustic microscopy

Acoustic resolution photoacoustic microscopy (AR-PAM) generally suffers from limited depth of focus, which had been extended by synthetic aperture focusing techniques (SAFTs). However, for three dimensional AR-PAM, current one dimensional (1D) SAFT and its improved version like cross-shaped SAFT do not provide isotropic resolution in the lateral direction. The full potential of the SAFT remains to be tapped. To this end, two dimensional (2D) SAFT with fast computing architecture is proposed in this work. Explained by geometric modeling and Fourier acoustics theories, 2D-SAFT provide the narrowest post-focusing capability, thus to achieve best lateral resolution. Compared with previous 1D-SAFT techniques, the proposed 2D-SAFT improved the lateral resolution by at least 1.7 times and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by about 10 dB in both simulation and experiments. Moreover, the improved 2D-SAFT algorithm is accelerated by a graphical processing unit that reduces the long period of reconstruction to only a few seconds. The proposed 2D-SAFT is demonstrated to outperform previous reported 1D SAFT in the aspects of improving the depth of focus, imaging resolution, and SNR with fast computational efficiency. This work facilitates future studies on in vivo deeper and high-resolution photoacoustic microscopy beyond several centimeters.

[1]  Daniel Razansky,et al.  Improved optoacoustic microscopy through three-dimensional spatial impulse response synthetic aperture focusing technique. , 2014, Optics letters.

[2]  Qingming Luo,et al.  Adaptive synthetic-aperture focusing technique for microvasculature imaging using photoacoustic microscopy. , 2012, Optics express.

[3]  A. Needles,et al.  Development and initial application of a fully integrated photoacoustic micro-ultrasound system , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

[4]  Jørgen Arendt Jensen,et al.  Synthetic aperture ultrasound imaging. , 2006, Ultrasonics.

[5]  M. Fink,et al.  Coherent plane-wave compounding for very high frame rate ultrasonography and transient elastography , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[6]  De Cai,et al.  Photoacoustic microscopy in vivo using synthetic-aperture focusing technique combined with three-dimensional deconvolution. , 2017, Optics express.

[7]  Houra Taghavi,et al.  Photoacoustic imaging driven by an interstitial irradiation source , 2015, Photoacoustics.

[8]  Ruey-Chyuan Shih,et al.  Ultrasonic Synthetic Aperture Focusing Using the Root-Mean-Square Velocity , 2013 .

[9]  M. Cameron.  Physical Agents in Rehabilitation : From Research to Practice , 2003 .

[10]  Jung-Taek Oh,et al.  Three-dimensional imaging of skin melanoma in vivo by dual-wavelength photoacoustic microscopy. , 2006, Journal of biomedical optics.

[11]  X. Luís Deán-Ben,et al.  Optoacoustic micro-tomography at 100 volumes per second , 2017, Scientific Reports.

[12]  R. Keith Raney,et al.  Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radar and Moving Targets , 1971, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[13]  Younan Xia,et al.  Near-infrared gold nanocages as a new class of tracers for photoacoustic sentinel lymph node mapping on a rat model. , 2009, Nano letters.

[14]  John E. Stone,et al.  OpenCL: A Parallel Programming Standard for Heterogeneous Computing Systems , 2010, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[15]  B T Cox,et al.  k-Wave: MATLAB toolbox for the simulation and reconstruction of photoacoustic wave fields. , 2010, Journal of biomedical optics.

[16]  Junjie Yao,et al.  Sensitivity of photoacoustic microscopy , 2014, Photoacoustics.

[17]  Zheng Yuanjin,et al.  Photoacoustic-Based-Close-Loop Temperature Control for Nanoparticle Hyperthermia , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[18]  Alexander Sutor,et al.  Ultrasonic imaging of complex specimens by processing multiple incident angles in full-angle synthetic aperture focusing technique , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.

[19]  Lihong V. Wang,et al.  Improved in vivo photoacoustic microscopy based on a virtual-detector concept. , 2006, Optics letters.

[20]  L. Ziomek.  Fundamentals of Acoustic Field Theory and Space-Time Signal Processing , 1994 .

[21]  R. Cobbold.  Foundations of Biomedical Ultrasound , 2006 .

[22]  Liang Song,et al.  Delay-multiply-and-sum-based synthetic aperture focusing in photoacoustic microscopy , 2016, Journal of biomedical optics.

[23]  Lihong V. Wang,et al.  Second generation optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy , 2011, BiOS.

[24]  Lihong V. Wang,et al.  Functional photoacoustic microscopy for high-resolution and noninvasive in vivo imaging , 2006, Nature Biotechnology.

[25]  Daniel Razansky,et al.  Universal weighted synthetic aperture focusing technique (W-SAFT) for scanning optoacoustic microscopy , 2017 .

[26]  Junjie Yao,et al.  Fast voice-coil scanning optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy. , 2011, Optics letters.

[27]  Pai-Chi Li,et al.  Adaptive imaging using the generalized coherence factor. , 2003, IEEE transactions on ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control.

[28]  B. Y. S. Yiu,et al.  GPU-based beamformer: Fast realization of plane wave compounding and synthetic aperture imaging , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[29]  Qingming Luo,et al.  Two-dimensional synthetic-aperture focusing technique in photoacoustic microscopy , 2011 .

[30]  Junjie Yao,et al.  In vivo photoacoustic microscopy with 7.6-µm axial resolution using a commercial 125-MHz ultrasonic transducer , 2012, Journal of biomedical optics.