Photoacoustic clutter reduction using plane wave ultrasound and a linear scatter estimation approach

In clinical photoacoustic imaging, strong light absorption in the skin and the resulting acoustic backscatter from inside the tissue are a major challenge. In the reconstructed image, these reflections, referred to as clutter, can hardly be distinguished from actual photoacoustic sources. It has been shown that especially in setups, where the strong skin absorption is within the field of view, clutter amplitudes are very strong. In this contribution, we focus on such setups with all absorbers and scatterers inside the imaging plane. Our approach uses additional plane wave ultrasound measurements from various angles that are processed according to linear scatter theory in order to approximate the reflections in the photoacoustic measurement. Using this information, the corresponding artifacts can be reduced.