Experimental evaluation of time domain models for ultrasound attenuation losses in photoacoustic imaging

Understanding and compensating ultrasound attenuation losses is an important issue in photoacoustic imaging. To contribute to this effort, simulated attenuated time domain waveforms are compared to experimental waveforms. The experimental waveforms are acquired by transmitting broadband ultrasound pulses through distilled water and porcine fat tissue. Three well-known modeling approaches are examined in detail with regard to accuracy and computation time. Furthermore, the influence of attenuation on imaging resolution is addressed. In the present paper, the focus lies on the calculation of attenuated detector signals. The results, however, also provide clues about the quality of image reconstruction.