Photoacoustic tomography of a rat cerebral cortex with a ring-based ultrasonic virtual point detector.

We image a rat cerebral cortex in situ by using a ring-based ultrasonic virtual point detector developed previously. Compared to the image generated by a finite-aperture detector, the image generated by the virtual point detector has a uniformly distributed resolution throughout the imaged area, owing to the lack of aperture effect of the ultrasonic detector. At the periphery of the image, the signal-to-noise ratio of the image obtained by the virtual point detector is also better than that of a finite-aperture detector. Furthermore, the virtual point detector can be scanned inside the brain to improve the local signal-to-noise ratio.