Volumetric and Simultaneous Photoacoustic and Ultrasound Imaging with a Conventional Linear Array in a Multiview Scanning Scheme

Clément Linger (1, 2) , Yoann Atlas (1) , Remy Winter (1, 3) , Marine Vandebrouck (1) , Maxime Faure (1, 4) , Théotim Lucas (1, 5) , S. Lori Bridal (1) , Jérôme Gâteau (1)

1 LIB - Laboratoire d'Imagerie Biomédicale [Paris]
2 IGPS - Institut Galien Paris-Saclay
3 URRIS UR2CA - Unité de Recherche Clinique de la Côte d’Azur
4 LaTIM - Laboratoire de Traitement de l'Information Medicale
5 MSC - Matière et Systèmes Complexes

Volumetric dual photacoustic (PA) / ultrasonic (US) imaging with precise spatial and temporal coregistration can provide valuable and complementary information for diagnosis and monitoring. Considerable research has sought to combine 3D PA/US imaging in configurations that can be transferred to clinical application but technical compromises currently result in poor image quality either for photoacoustic or ultrasonic modes. Simultaneous 3D PA/US tomography was implemented here by interlacing PA and US acquisitions during the rotate-translate scan of a 5-MHz linear array (12 angles and 30 mm translational range to image a cylindrical volume of 21 mm diameter and 19 mm length within 21 seconds). Volumetric image reconstruction was performed with synthetic aperture approaches. An original calibration method was developed to estimate 6 geometrical parameters and 1 temporal off-set providing sharpest and best superimposed reconstructions. Calibration thread phantom design and choice of metrics to build the cost function were based on analysis of a numerical phantom and the final selection demonstrates a high estimation accuracy of the 7 parameters. Experimental estimations validated the calibration repeatability. Experiments in an additional phantom showed a superposition distance between thread centers identified in the PA and US images to be smaller than 10% of the acoustic wavelength, and a spatial resolution on the order of the wavelength. Dual mode 3D imaging with high-quality co-registration and excellent, uniform spatial resolution was further demonstrated on phantoms with complementary contrasts, and should contribute to more sensitive and robust imaging to detect and follow biological changes or the accumulation of nanoagents in living systems.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]; Imagerie

Clément Linger, Yoann Atlas, Remy Winter, Marine Vandebrouck, Maxime Faure, et al.. Volumetric and Simultaneous Photoacoustic and Ultrasound Imaging with a Conventional Linear Array in a Multiview Scanning Scheme. 2022. ⟨hal-03904339v1⟩