Improved optoacoustic microscopy through three-dimensional spatial impulse response synthetic aperture focusing technique

Synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) is effective in restoring lateral resolution of ultrasonic images for scans with focusing-related distortions. Although successfully applied in pulse-echo ultrasonics, the physical nature of an optoacoustic modality requires a modified algorithm to return accurate results. The SIR-SAFT method reported here uses the spatial impulse response (SIR) of the transducer to weight the contributions to the SAFT and is tailored to provide significant resolution and signal gains for out-of-focus sources in scanning optoacoustic microscopy systems. Furthermore, the SIR-SAFT is implemented in full three dimensions, applicable to signals both far of and at the focus of the ultrasonic detector. The method has been further shown to outperform conventional SAFT algorithms for both simulated and experimental optoacoustic data. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America