TY - GEN
T1 - Software-based approach toward vendor independent real-time photoacoustic imaging using ultrasound beamformed data
AU - Zhang, Haichong K.
AU - Huang, Howard
AU - Lei, Chen
AU - Kim, Younsu
AU - Boctor, Emad M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Financial supports were provided by Johns Hopkins University internal funds, NSF Grant No. IIS-1162095, NIH Grant No. R21CA202199, and NIBIB-NIH Grant No. EB015638.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 SPIE.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has shown its potential for many clinical applications, but current research and usage of PA imaging are constrained by additional hardware costs to collect channel data, as the PA signals are incorrectly processed in existing clinical ultrasound systems. This problem arises from the fact that ultrasound systems beamform the PA signals as echoes from the ultrasound transducer instead of directly from illuminated sources. Consequently, conventional implementations of PA imaging rely on parallel channel acquisition from research platforms, which are not only slow and expensive, but are also mostly not approved by the FDA for clinical use. In previous studies, we have proposed the synthetic-aperture based photoacoustic re-beamformer (SPARE) that uses ultrasound beamformed radio frequency (RF) data as the input, which is readily available in clinical ultrasound scanners. The goal of this work is to implement the SPARE beamformer in a clinical ultrasound system, and to experimentally demonstrate its real-time visualization. Assuming a high pulsed repetition frequency (PRF) laser is used, a PZT-based pseudo PA source transmission was synchronized with the ultrasound line trigger. As a result, the frame-rate increases when limiting the image field-of-view (FOV), with 50 to 20 frames per second achieved for FOVs from 35 mm to 70 mm depth, respectively. Although in reality the maximum PRF of laser firing limits the PA image frame rate, this result indicates that the developed software is capable of displaying PA images with the maximum possible frame-rate for certain laser system without acquiring channel data.
AB - Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has shown its potential for many clinical applications, but current research and usage of PA imaging are constrained by additional hardware costs to collect channel data, as the PA signals are incorrectly processed in existing clinical ultrasound systems. This problem arises from the fact that ultrasound systems beamform the PA signals as echoes from the ultrasound transducer instead of directly from illuminated sources. Consequently, conventional implementations of PA imaging rely on parallel channel acquisition from research platforms, which are not only slow and expensive, but are also mostly not approved by the FDA for clinical use. In previous studies, we have proposed the synthetic-aperture based photoacoustic re-beamformer (SPARE) that uses ultrasound beamformed radio frequency (RF) data as the input, which is readily available in clinical ultrasound scanners. The goal of this work is to implement the SPARE beamformer in a clinical ultrasound system, and to experimentally demonstrate its real-time visualization. Assuming a high pulsed repetition frequency (PRF) laser is used, a PZT-based pseudo PA source transmission was synchronized with the ultrasound line trigger. As a result, the frame-rate increases when limiting the image field-of-view (FOV), with 50 to 20 frames per second achieved for FOVs from 35 mm to 70 mm depth, respectively. Although in reality the maximum PRF of laser firing limits the PA image frame rate, this result indicates that the developed software is capable of displaying PA images with the maximum possible frame-rate for certain laser system without acquiring channel data.
KW - Clinical ultrasound systems
KW - Low-cost
KW - Photoacoustic imaging
KW - Real-time
KW - Ultrasound beamformed data
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U2 - 10.1117/12.2252769
DO - 10.1117/12.2252769
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85019193400
T3 - Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
BT - Photons Plus Ultrasound
A2 - Oraevsky, Alexander A.
A2 - Wang, Lihong V.
PB - SPIE
T2 - Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2017
Y2 - 29 January 2017 through 1 February 2017
ER -