Correction of the effects of acoustic heterogeneity on thermoacoustic tomography using transmission ultrasound tomography

Abstract

The effects of acoustic heterogeneities on thermoacoustic tomography (TAT) are examined and corrected. One assumption made in the existing reconstruction algorithms for thermoacoustic tomography is that biological tissue is acoustically homogeneous. In medical imaging applications, this assumption can cause blurring and distortion in the reconstructed images. This degradation of image quality can be compensated for by using an approximate distribution of the acoustic speed in the tissue. A method based on transmission ultrasound tomography, which is compatible with our thermoacoustic imaging setup, is developed to correct those effects. Experiments verify the validity of this method. The technique can be used to improve the image quality of thermoacoustic tomography.

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