Experimental investigation of target and transducer effects on quantitative image reconstruction in photoaconstic tomography

In principle, absorbed energy profiles can be exactly reconstructed from photoacoustic measurements on a closed surface. Clinical applications, however, involve compromises due to transducer focus, frequency characteristics, and incomplete measurement apertures. These tradeoffs introduce artifacts and errors in reconstructed absorption distributions that affect quantitative interpretations as well as qualitative contrast between features. The quantitative effects of target geometry, limited measurement surfaces, and bandpass transducer frequency response have been investigated using a ring transducer system designed for small animal imaging. The directionality of photoacoustic radiation is shown to increase with target aspect ratio, producing proportionate overestimates of absorption values for two-dimension apertures less than approximately 150 degrees. For all target geometries and orientations, mean absorption values approach the full view values for hemicircular measurement surfaces although the true spatial uniformity is recovered only with the complete surface. The bandpass transducer frequency spectrum produces a peaked amplitude response biased toward spatial features ranging from 1 to 8 times the system resolution. We discuss the implications of these results for design of clinical systems.