Advances in Photoacoustic Imaging: Tomography and Applications

A special issue of Journal of Imaging (ISSN 2313-433X). This special issue belongs to the section "Medical Imaging".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2025) | Viewed by 1797

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Imaging and Visual Representation Laboratory, Nanchang University, Honggutan District, Nanchang 330047, China
Interests: intelligent photoelectric imaging; artificial intelligence; optical imaging; photoacoustic imaging; super-resolution imaging

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Photoacoustic tomography imaging, as a coupled physics imaging modality, utilizes the spatial variation of photon absorption within biological tissues to imaging. In practice, a variety of methods have emerged, including analytical formulations, especially backprojection formulations, as well as computational model-based techniques such as time inversion and iterative methods. However, the incompleteness of measurement data and the reliance on approximations for forward operators and acoustic models make these conventional methods only approximate solutions in practical cases. To ameliorate these problems, one strategy is to introduce additional a priori information to enhance the reconstruction process. One downside of this is that it can be computationally intensive and time-consuming, limiting its practical application. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a new method for photoacoustic tomography image reconstruction that aims to mitigate the effects of incomplete a while reducing the interference with the image. In this context, deep learning frameworks and data-driven methods show great potential but also face challenges, such as accuracy and robustness guarantees. In recent years, deep learning has been developing rapidly in photoacoustic tomography, with high-performance generative models (e.g., GANs, diffusion models) excelling in photoacoustic tomography image reconstruction. This Special Issue will focus on the application of deep learning in photoacoustic tomography and discuss the improvement of deep learning methods’ accuracy in reconstruction. Deep learning has great application prospects in photoacoustic tomography imaging and is well worth further research.

Dr. Xianlin Song
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • photoacoustic tomography
  • physics imaging modality
  • a priori information
  • accuracy and robustness
  • deep learning
  • generative models

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 3983 KB  
Article
Parameter Selection in Coupled Dynamical Systems for Tomographic Image Reconstruction
by Ryosuke Kasai, Omar M. Abou Al-Ola and Tetsuya Yoshinaga
J. Imaging 2026, 12(3), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging12030126 - 12 Mar 2026
Viewed by 297
Abstract
This study investigates the performance of image-reconstruction methods derived from coupled dynamical systems for solving linear inverse problems, focusing on how appropriate parameter selection enhances noise-suppression capability in tomographic image reconstruction. Our previous work has established the stability of linear and nonlinear variants [...] Read more.
This study investigates the performance of image-reconstruction methods derived from coupled dynamical systems for solving linear inverse problems, focusing on how appropriate parameter selection enhances noise-suppression capability in tomographic image reconstruction. Our previous work has established the stability of linear and nonlinear variants of such systems on the basis of Lyapunov’s theorem. However, the influence of parameter choice on reconstruction quality has not been fully clarified. To address this issue, we introduce a parameter adjustment strategy based on an optimization principle. Two complementary optimization strategies are considered. The first employs ground-truth images to determine optimal parameter values that serve as a numerical benchmark for evaluating reconstruction performance. The second relies solely on measured projection data, enabling practical application without prior knowledge of the true image. Numerical experiments using phantoms with relatively high noise levels demonstrate that appropriate parameter selection markedly improves reconstruction accuracy and robustness. These results clarify how properly tuned reconstruction methods derived from coupled dynamical systems can effectively exploit their inherent dynamics to achieve noise suppression in tomographic inverse problems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Photoacoustic Imaging: Tomography and Applications)
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18 pages, 1198 KB  
Article
Graph-Enhanced Expectation Maximization for Emission Tomography
by Ryosuke Kasai and Hideki Otsuka
J. Imaging 2026, 12(1), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging12010048 - 20 Jan 2026
Viewed by 381
Abstract
Emission tomography, including single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), requires image reconstruction from noisy and incomplete projection data. The maximum-likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) algorithm is widely used due to its statistical foundation and non-negativity preservation, but it is highly sensitive to noise, particularly in [...] Read more.
Emission tomography, including single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), requires image reconstruction from noisy and incomplete projection data. The maximum-likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) algorithm is widely used due to its statistical foundation and non-negativity preservation, but it is highly sensitive to noise, particularly in low-count conditions. Although total variation (TV) regularization can reduce noise, it often oversmooths structural details and requires careful parameter tuning. We propose a Graph-Enhanced Expectation Maximization (GREM) algorithm that incorporates graph-based neighborhood information into an MLEM-type multiplicative reconstruction scheme. The method is motivated by a penalized formulation combining a Kullback–Leibler divergence term with a graph Laplacian regularization term, promoting local structural consistency while preserving edges. The resulting update retains the multiplicative structure of MLEM and preserves the non-negativity of the image estimates. Numerical experiments using synthetic phantoms under multiple noise levels, as well as clinical 99mTc-GSA liver SPECT data, demonstrate that GREM consistently outperforms conventional MLEM and TV-regularized MLEM in terms of PSNR and MS-SSIM. These results indicate that GREM provides an effective and practical approach for edge-preserving noise suppression in emission tomography without relying on external training data. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Photoacoustic Imaging: Tomography and Applications)
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