3D information fusion of optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy for extended depth of field using pyramid transform

Abstract

In recent years, more and more organizations and teams in the world are engaged in photoacoustic imaging research. Photoacoustic imaging is in a state of vigorous development. As an important branch of photoacoustic microscopy, optical resolution photoacoustic microscopy combines the advantages of optical imaging and acoustic imaging, which has the advantages of high resolution, high contrast, high sensitivity and non-invasiveness. However, in order to obtain high resolution, it is often necessary to focus the laser beam, which will lead to small imaging depth of field and unable to obtain large-scale structural information. However, in clinical diagnosis, doctors want to obtain large-scale and high-resolution structural and functional information as much as possible, so it is of great significance to solve the problem of small depth of field in photoacoustic microscopy. In order to expand the depth of field of photoacoustic microscopy imaging, this paper proposes a three-dimensional information fusion algorithm for photoacoustic microscopy imaging. Firstly, we obtain two sets of vascular data (except the focus position) by virtual photoacoustic microscopy. Then we take out the B scan data of two sets of three-dimensional data sets in turn, and use the fusion algorithm based on pyramid transform to fuse them. Finally, the maximum projection is used to restore the original data and the fused data. We compare the maximum projection before and after fusion. The experimental results show that the algorithm realizes the extension of the depth of field, and the fused data successfully displays more abundant vascular information in an image, and maintains the advantages of high contrast and high resolution of photoacoustic microscopy imaging.