A Hilbert-based Coherence Factor for Photoacoustic Imaging

Among the different configurations of a photoacoustic imaging (PAI) system, the planar configuration has many applications. Due to the limited-view of planar configuration, the resolution and contrast of the imaging system are low. To improve resolution and contrast, the coherence factor (CF) can be applied to the reconstructed image. Although CF improves the resolution and contrast, it causes missed data in the reconstructed image. In this paper, we proposed a Hilbert-based CF (H-CF) method to compensate for the missed data issue and also increase the contrast. Three numerical studies were conducted to evaluate the proposed method's performance. The numerical results show that applying H-CF increases contrast ratio (CR), and structural similarity index measure (SSIM) up to 0.19 and 19 dB, respectively. Therefore, the proposed method can be a suitable replacement for conventional methods.