Photoacoustic tomography of monkey brain using virtual point ultrasonic transducers

Liming Nie; Zijian Guo; Lihong V. Wang

doi:10.1117/1.3595842

1 July 2011 Photoacoustic tomography of monkey brain using virtual point ultrasonic transducers

Liming Nie, Zijian Guo, Lihong V. Wang

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Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 16, Issue 7, 076005 (July 2011). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3595842

Abstract

A photoacoustic tomography system (PAT) using virtual point ultrasonic transducers was developed and applied to image a monkey brain. The custom-built transducers provide a 10-fold greater field-of-view (FOV) than finite-aperture unfocused transducers as well as an improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reduced artifacts rather than negative-lens transducers. Their tangential resolution, radial resolution, and (SNR) improvements were quantified using tissue phantoms. Our PAT system can achieve high uniformity in both resolution (<1 mm) and SNR (>8) within a large FOV of 6 cm in diameter, even when the imaging objects are enclosed by a monkey skull. The cerebral cortex of a monkey brain was accurately mapped transcranially, through a skull ranging from 2 to 4 mm in thickness. This study demonstrates that PAT can overcome the optical and ultrasound attenuation of a relatively thick skull and can potentially be applied to human neonatal brain imaging.

©(2011) Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

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Liming Nie, Zijian Guo, and Lihong V. Wang "Photoacoustic tomography of monkey brain using virtual point ultrasonic transducers," Journal of Biomedical Optics 16(7), 076005 (1 July 2011). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3595842

Published: 1 July 2011

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