Sound velocity measurement is of great importance to the application of biomedical especially in the research of acoustic detection and acoustic tomography. Using correct sound velocities in each medium other than one unified sound propagation speed, we can effectively enhance sound based imaging resolution. Photoacoustic tomography (PAT), is defined as cross-sectional or three-dimensional (3D) imaging of a material based on the photoacoustic effect and it is a developing, non-invasive imaging method in biomedical research. This contribution proposes a method to concurrently calculate multiple acoustic speeds in different mediums. Firstly, we get the size of infra-structure of the target by B-mode ultrasonic imaging method. Then we build the photoacoustic (PA) image of the same target with different acoustic speed in different medium. By repeatedly evaluate the quality of reconstruct PA image, we dynamically calibrate the acoustic speeds in different medium to build a finest PA image. Thus, we take these speeds of sound as the correct acoustic propagation velocities in according mediums. Experiments show that our non-invasive method can yield correct speed of sound with less than 0.3% error which might benefit future research in biomedical science.

Date Published: 15 March 2016
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9708, Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2016, 97083D (15 March 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2209242

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9708:
Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2016
Alexander A. Oraevsky; Lihong V. Wang, Editor(s)