Reconstruction algorithms for remote photoacoustic imaging

In this work we present and evaluate different algorithms for remote photoacoustic imaging. Three different reconstruction algorithms are described and compared: a synthetic aperture focusing technique, a Fourier domain synthetic aperture technique and a spectral-domain time reversal algorithm. Reconstruction for arbitrarily shaped surfaces is shown for the synthetic aperture and time reversal algorithms. The algorithms are tested on simulated data as well as real measurement data. The latter are acquired with a remote photoacoustic imaging system utilizing a two-wave mixing interferometer with a photorefractive crystal. Due to the interferometric measurement technique projections of the displacements parallel to the detection beam are detected. This can lead to a degradation of the reconstructed images and is compensated in k-space. The surface morphology is determined by optical coherence tomography for reconstruction from real measurement data on a non-planar surface.