Impact of System Factors on the Performance of Photoacoustic Tomography Scanners

Abstract

High-performance imaging is essential for widespread applications of photoacoustic tomography (PAT) in biomedicine. So far, no comprehensive studies are reported on the impact of system factors on imaging performance, in spite of their importance. Based on a prototype PAT scanner, we study eight factors associated with the acoustic reception process in PAT, namely, detector view angle, element number, center frequency, bandwidth, aperture size, focusing, orientation error, and scan step angle error, and investigated how they impact on the image quality. Simulations and experiments are both presented to support the findings in this study. This work is expected to provide a practical guide for advanced PAT scanner design with enhanced imaging performance.