Model-based X-ray Induced Acoustic Computed Tomography

X-ray induced acoustic computed tomography (XACT) provides X-ray absorption based contrast with acoustic detection. For its clinical translation, XACT imaging often has a limited field of view. This can result in image artifacts and overall loss of quantification accuracy. In this article, we aim to demonstrate model-based XACT image reconstruction to address these problems. An efficient matrix-free implementation of the regularized LSQR (MF-LSQR) based minimization scheme and a non-iterative model back-projection (MBP) scheme for computing XACT reconstructions have been demonstrated in this paper. The proposed algorithms have been numerically validated and then employed to perform reconstructions from experimental measurements obtained from an XACT setup. While the commonly used back-projection algorithm produces limited-view and noisy artifacts in the region of interest, model-based LSQR minimization overcomes these issues. The model based algorithms also reduce the ring artifacts caused due to the non-uniformity response of the multichannel data acquisition. Using the model-based reconstruction algorithms, we are able to obtain reasonable XACT reconstructions for acoustic measurements of up to 120° view. Although the MBP is more efficient than the model-based LSQR algorithm, it provides only the structural information of the region of interest. Overall, it has been demonstrated that the model-based image reconstruction yields better image quality for XACT than the standard back-projection. Moreover, the combination of model-based image reconstruction with different regularization methods can solve the limited view problem for XACT imaging (in many realistic cases where the full-view dataset is unavailable) and hence pave the way for the future clinical translation.