Model-based photoacoustic image reconstruction using compressed sensing and smoothed L0 norm

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a novel medical imaging modality that uses the advantages of the spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging and the high contrast of pure optical imaging. Analytical algorithms are usually employed to reconstruct the photoacoustic (PA) images as a results of their simple implementation. However, they provide a low accurate image. Model-based (MB) algorithms are used to improve the image quality and accuracy while a large number of transducers and data acquisition are needed. In this paper, we have combined the theory of compressed sensing (CS) with MB algorithms to reduce the number of transducer. Smoothed version of ℓ-norm (Sℓ) was proposed as the reconstruction method, and it was compared with simple iterative reconstruction (IR) and basis pursuit. The results show that Sℓ provides a higher image quality in comparison with other methods while a low number of transducers were. Quantitative comparison demonstrates that, at the same condition, the Sℓ leads to a peak-signal-to-noise ratio for about two times of the basis pursuit.