Photoacoustic radar phase-filtered spatial resolution and co-registered ultrasound image enhancement for tumor detection.

Co-registered ultrasound (US) and frequency-domain photoacoustic radar (FD-PAR) imaging is reported for the first time in this paper. The merits of ultrasound and cross-correlation (radar) frequency-domain photoacoustic imaging are leveraged for accurate tumor detection. Commercial US imagers possess sophisticated, optimized software for rapid image acquisition that could dramatically speed-up PA imaging. The PAR image generated from the amplitude of the cross-correlation between detected and input signals was filtered by the standard deviation (SD) of the phase of the correlation signal, resulting in strong improvement of image spatial resolution, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast. Application of phase-mediated image improvement is illustrated by imaging a cancer cell-injected mouse. A 14-15 dB SNR gain was recorded for the phase-filtered image compared to the amplitude and phase independently, while ~340 μm spatial resolution was seen for the phase PAR image compared to ~840 μm for the amplitude image.