A New Method Based on Virtual Fluence Detectors and Software Toolbox for Handheld Spectral Optoacoustic Tomography

A minimal setup for optoacoustic (OA) imaging requires an ultrasound probe and a pulsed laser. Such a system is capable of imaging small blood vessels and is sensitive to variations in their oxygen saturation. However, absolute oxygenation values cannot be obtained without a proper correction for the varying light fluence resulting from the optical attenuation in the surrounding tissue. Other techniques, such as near-infrared optical tomography (NIROT) can be employed to assist OA imaging for fluence compensation. In this paper, we propose using blood vessels as virtual fluence detectors (VD), which serve as light detectors for NIROT image reconstructions. By avoiding the use of real photon detectors, a simpler system could be implemented in a hand-held device comparable in size with conventional ultrasound probes. Even for a low number of VDs it provides increased informational value which, in combination with a large number of light sources, results in precise reconstructions. We define a tomographic inverse problem based on ratios of OA signals measured at several wavelengths where optical properties of VDs, tumor and normal tissue can be reconstructed simultaneously. The use of ratio data effectively removes light source skin coupling errors for the case of emission in a single point, which is required for clinical applications. We have defined the mathematical structure of an inverse problem where chromophore concentrations for normal, tumor and embedded VDs are obtained simultaneously from this ratio data. To test the performance of our approach we show an image reconstruction on a virtual phantom with an embedded tumor in the vicinity of eight blood vessels. We conclude that this limited number of VDs, located in areas of maximum sensitivity result in high quality reconstructions. For the simplest case of a single blood vessel located in a homogeneous tissue, we present a graphical user interface based toolbox for conducting virtual experiments. The toolbox can be used to assist in the design and optimization of suitable hardware for different applications, among which imaging tumor oxygenation and ischemic lesions in the brain of preterm infants are of great clinical value.