TY - JOUR
T1 - Spatial Angular Compounding of Photoacoustic Images
AU - Kang, Hyun Jae
AU - Bell, Muyinatu A.Lediju
AU - Guo, Xiaoyu
AU - Boctor, Emad M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Financial support was provided by Johns Hopkins University internal funds, NIH grant R21-EB015638, and NSF grant IIS-1162095. M. A. Lediju Bell additionally acknowledges support from NIH grant K99-EB018994
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2016/8
Y1 - 2016/8
N2 - Photoacoustic (PA) images utilize pulsed lasers and ultrasound transducers to visualize targets with higher optical absorption than the surrounding medium. However, they are susceptible to acoustic clutter and background noise artifacts that obfuscate biomedical structures of interest. We investigated three spatial-angular compounding methods to improve PA image quality for biomedical applications, implemented by combining multiple images acquired as an ultrasound probe was rotated about the elevational axis with the laser beam and target fixed. Compounding with conventional averaging was based on the pose information of each PA image, while compounding with weighted and selective averaging utilized both the pose and image content information. Weighted-average compounding enhanced PA images with the least distortion of signal size, particularly when there were large (i.e., 2.5 mm and 7°) perturbations from the initial probe position. Selective-average compounding offered the best improvement in image quality with up 181, 1665, and 1568 times higher contrast, CNR, and SNR, respectively, compared to the mean values of individual PA images. The three presented spatial compounding methods have promising potential to enhance image quality in multiple photoacoustic applications.
AB - Photoacoustic (PA) images utilize pulsed lasers and ultrasound transducers to visualize targets with higher optical absorption than the surrounding medium. However, they are susceptible to acoustic clutter and background noise artifacts that obfuscate biomedical structures of interest. We investigated three spatial-angular compounding methods to improve PA image quality for biomedical applications, implemented by combining multiple images acquired as an ultrasound probe was rotated about the elevational axis with the laser beam and target fixed. Compounding with conventional averaging was based on the pose information of each PA image, while compounding with weighted and selective averaging utilized both the pose and image content information. Weighted-average compounding enhanced PA images with the least distortion of signal size, particularly when there were large (i.e., 2.5 mm and 7°) perturbations from the initial probe position. Selective-average compounding offered the best improvement in image quality with up 181, 1665, and 1568 times higher contrast, CNR, and SNR, respectively, compared to the mean values of individual PA images. The three presented spatial compounding methods have promising potential to enhance image quality in multiple photoacoustic applications.
KW - Biomedical imaging
KW - Image enhancement
KW - biomedical image processing
KW - image reconstruction
KW - ultrasonic imaging
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U2 - 10.1109/TMI.2016.2531109
DO - 10.1109/TMI.2016.2531109
M3 - Article
C2 - 26890642
AN - SCOPUS:84986215008
VL - 35
SP - 1845
EP - 1855
JO - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
JF - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
SN - 0278-0062
IS - 8
M1 - 7410055
ER -