Recent developments in photoacoustic image reconstruction

Abstract

Photoacoustic phenomenon has been investigated. An experimental protocol using photoacoustic principle has been proposed to image the regional distribution of electromagnetic energy absorption density in an object. This paper presents a rigorous method for photoacoustic image reconstruction. It is proved that photoacoustic image reconstruction is intrinsically a three-dimensional (3D) procedure. The spatial smear function (SSF) is introduced. An example using synthetic data proves the validity of photoacoustic image reconstruction theory proposed by the paper. The example shows that even the first order approximation of photoacoustic image reconstruction gives good agreement with the reality. It is also seen from the example that the accuracy and noise immunity of the reconstruction procedure depend on the experimental arrangement.