Limited-view photoacoustic tomography utilizing backscatterers as virtual transducers

In photoacoustic tomography, acoustic scattering is usually considered as a nuisance, because it distorts an incident wavefront and then induces artifacts and distortion. This work demonstrates that backscatterers could function as virtual transducers arranged behind the region of interest and are used to improve limited-view reconstruction. This idea is confirmed by both simulations and experiments. Our results suggest that enhanced photoacoustic tomography could be obtained by taking advantage of native scatterers in tissues or artificial ones injected around the region of interest.

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