Abstract

Photoacoustic imaging with line detectors that are longer than the maximum size of an object is able to reveal the threedimensional (3D) structure of the thermoelastic pressure distribution within the object. The image acquisition and reconstruction is a two step process. In the first step acoustic signals that are measured while the line detector is translated around the object are used to reconstruct a projection of the initial pressure in direction of the line. This is a two-dimensional (2D) image reconstruction problem. In the second step projections taken at multiple line orientations are used to reconstruct the 3D image by inversion of the Radon transform. In this study methods for solving the 2D reconstruction problem are presented. In an experiment using an optical interferometer as acoustic line detector the complete 3D imaging procedure is demonstrated on a phantom.

© 2007 SPIE