Numerical investigation of a frequency-domain model-based method for 3-D transcranial photoacoustic computed tomography

Abstract

Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) offers rich optical contrast combined with the penetration depth of ultrasound for transcranial imaging. However, the skull introduces significant phase aberrations that degrade image quality. While the time-reversal (TR) method can mitigate these acoustic barriers, its computational intensity makes it unsuitable for time-sensitive applications. To overcome these limitations, we propose a frequency-domain model-based (FDMB) method. The performance of the FDMB method is evaluated against the TR method across various sensor densities, data sampling rates, and perturbations in speed-of-sound maps and sensor locations using 3-D numerical modeling. The results show that the proposed method is three orders of magnitude faster than the TR method while maintaining better image quality, highlighting its potential for efficient and accurate 3-D transcranial PACT.