Colloquium: "Image Reconstruction Methods for Photoacoustic Computed Tomography in Heterogeneous Media with Application to Experimental Data"

Abstract: Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is an emerging biomedical imaging modality that has great potential for a wide range of preclinical and clinical imaging applications. It can be viewed as a hybrid imaging modality in the sense that it utilizes an optical contrast mechanism combined with ultrasonic detection principles, thereby combining the advantages of optical and ultrasonic imaging while circumventing their primary limitations. The goal of PACT is to reconstruct the distribution of an object's absorbed optical energy density from measurements of pressure wavefields that are induced via the thermoacoustic effect. This corresponds to an inverse source problem. In this talk, we review our recent advancements in image reconstruction approaches for PACT. Such advancements include physics-based models of the measurement process and associated inversion methods for reconstructing images from limited data sets in acoustically heterogeneous media. Applications of PACT to transcranial brain imaging and breast cancer detection will be presented.

Host: John McCarthy

Tea @ 3:45pm in Cupples I, room 200