High contrast photoacoustic imaging with dual apodization with cross-correlation: ex-vivo study

Photoacoustic (PA) images generally suffer from high clutter levels since only one-way acoustic beam forming is used to reconstruct an image. Several methods have been presented in the ultrasound (US) literature to suppress sidelobes and reduce artifacts due to phase aberrations. Notable is a class of methods using the dual apodization with cross-correlation (DAX) method. Although a very powerful tool, DAX weighting can create artifacts in complex source environments, generally underestimating the strength of weak point scatterers and speckle regions while overestimating noise signals. This fact can work to our advantage, however, in visualizing microvessels or locating regions with a significant concentration of contrast agents using PA imaging. We examined the use of PA imaging combined with DAX processing to obtain high-contrast images of a black dye inclusion placed ex vivo into fresh bovine tissue. The tissue sample was imaged with an interleaved, real-time US/PA system including a pulse laser source operating at 20 Hz. A 5MHz linear array transducer was used both for conventional US imaging and to detect the PA signal at 720 nm wavelength. Results suggest that PA imaging with DAX combined with ultrasound imaging can produce high-contrast and high-spatial-resolution visualization of particle inclusions.