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Optoacoustic tomography (OAT) is inherently a three-dimensional (3D) inverse problem. However, most studies of OAT image reconstruction still employ two-dimensional imaging models. One important reason is because 3D image reconstruction is computationally burdensome. The aim of this work is to accelerate existing image reconstruction algorithms for 3D OAT by use of parallel programming techniques.Parallelization strategies are proposed to accelerate a filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm and two different pairs of projection/backprojection operations that correspond to two different numerical imaging models. The algorithms are designed to fully exploit the parallel computing power of graphics processing units (GPUs). In order to evaluate the parallelization strategies for the projection/backprojection pairs, an iterative image reconstruction algorithm is implemented. Computer simulation and experimental studies are conducted to investigate the computational efficiency and numerical accuracy of the developed algorithms.The GPU implementations improve the computational efficiency by factors of 1000, 125, and 250 for the FBP algorithm and the two pairs of projection/backprojection operators, respectively. Accurate images are reconstructed by use of the FBP and iterative image reconstruction algorithms from both computer-simulated and experimental data.Parallelization strategies for 3D OAT image reconstruction are proposed for the first time. These GPU-based implementations significantly reduce the computational time for 3D image reconstruction, complementing our earlier work on 3D OAT iterative image reconstruction.

Dual-head flat-panel positron emission tomography (PET) is the dedicated system for small-animal imaging because of its high spatial resolution and detection sensitivity. Unlike the conventional ring-based PET system, the dual-head system is versatile and can be reconfigured readily to accommodate different sample sizes and/or to achieve an optimal system performance. However, the unique imaging geometry also leads to severe depth-of-interaction (DOl) blurring. Monte Carlo simulation has been employed to account for DOl effects in the system response matrix with high accuracy, but the long simulation times make routine search for an optimal configuration impractical. To facilitate the system optimization while considering the parallax error, we employ an efficient numerical method to model the DOl effect in the system matrix for image reconstruction and accelerate the computation with the graphics processing units (GPUs). Among the system response matrices corresponding to different geometric configurations, a favorable one can be selected by exploiting the statistical detection theory. Computer simulation studies were carried out to validate and quantitatively evaluate the proposed method.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an important imaging modality in both clinical usage and research studies. We have developed a compact high-sensitivity PET system that consisted of two large-area panel PET detector heads, which produce more than 224 million lines of response and thus request dramatic computational demands. In this work, we employed a state-of-the-art graphics processing unit (GPU), NVIDIA Tesla C2070, to yield an efficient reconstruction process. Our approaches ingeniously integrate the distinguished features of the symmetry properties of the imaging system and GPU architectures, including block/warp/thread assignments and effective memory usage, to accelerate the computations for ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) image reconstruction. The OSEM reconstruction algorithms were implemented employing both CPU-based and GPU-based codes, and their computational performance was quantitatively analyzed and compared. The results showed that the GPU-accelerated scheme can drastically reduce the reconstruction time and thus can largely expand the applicability of the dual-head PET system.

Purpose: Optoacoustic tomography (OAT) is inherently a three-dimensional (3D) inverse problem. However, most studies of OAT image reconstruction still employ two-dimensional (2D) imaging models. One important reason is because 3D image reconstruction is computationally burdensome. The aim of this work is to accelerate existing image reconstruction algorithms for 3D OAT by use of parallel programming techniques. Methods: Parallelization strategies are proposed to accelerate a filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm and two different pairs of projection/backprojection operations that correspond to two different numerical imaging models. The algorithms are designed to fully exploit the parallel computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs). In order to evaluate the parallelization strategies for the projection/backprojection pairs, an iterative image reconstruction algorithm is implemented. Computer-simulation and experimental studies are conducted to investigate the computational efficiency and numerical accuracy of the developed algorithms. Results: The GPU implementations improve the computational efficiency by factors of 1, 000, 125, and 250 for the FBP algorithm and the two pairs of projection/backprojection operators, respectively. Accurate images are reconstructed by use of the FBP and iterative image reconstruction algorithms from both computer-simulated and experimental data. Conclusions: Parallelization strategies for 3D OAT image reconstruction are proposed for the first time. These GPU-based implementations significantly reduce the computational time for 3D image reconstruction, complementing our earlier work on 3D OAT iterative image reconstruction.