Pulse decomposition-based analysis of PAT/TAT error caused by negative lobes in limited-view conditions

Pulse decomposition has been proven to be efficient to analyze complicated signals and it is introduced into the photo-acoustic and thermo-acoustic tomography to eliminate reconstruction distortions caused by negative lobes.During image reconstruction,negative lobes bring errors in the estimation of acoustic pulse amplitude,which is closely related to the distribution of absorption coefficient.The negative lobe error degrades imaging quality seriously in limited-view conditions because it cannot be offset so well as in full-view conditions.Therefore,a pulse decomposition formula is provided with detailed deduction to eliminate the negative lobe error and is incorporated into the popular delay-and-sum method for better reconstructing the image without additional complicated computation.Numerical experiments show that the pulse decomposition improves the image quality obviously in the limited-view conditions,such as separating adjacent absorbers,discovering a small absorber despite disturbance from a big absorber nearby,etc.

Absorption Line Profile Recovery Based on TDLS and MEMS Micro-Mirror for Photoacoustic Gas Sensing

A novel and efficient absorption line recovery technique is presented.A micro-electromechanical systems(MEMS) mirror driven by an electrothermal actuator is used to generate laser intensity modulation through the mirror reflection.Tunable diode laser spectroscopy(TDLS) and photoacoustic spectroscopy(PAS) are used to recover the target absorption line profile which is compared with the theoretical Voigt profile.The target gas is 0.01% acetylene(C2H2) in a nitrogen host gas.The laser diode wavelength is swept across the P17 absorption line of acetylene at 1 535.4 nm by a current ramp,and an erbium-doped fibre amplifier(EDFA) is used to enhance the optical intensity and increase the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR).A SNR of about 35 is obtained with 100 mW laser power from the EDFA.Good agreement is achieved between the experimental results and the theoretical simulation for the P17 absorption line profile.

Some Universal Properties of the Green’s Functions Associated with the Wave Equation in Bounded Partially-Homogeneous Domains and Their Use in Acoustic Tomography

Direct and inverse scattering problems connected with the wave equation in non-homogeneous bounded domains constitute challenging actual subjects for both mathematicians and engineers. Among them one can mention, for example, inverse source problems in seismology, nondestructive archeological probing, mine prospecting, inverse initial-value problems in acoustic tomography, etc. In spite of its crucial importance, almost all of the available rigorous investigations concern the case of unbounded simple domains such as layered planar or cylindrical or spherical structures. The main reason for the lack of the works related to non-homogeneous bounded structures is the extreme complexity of the explicit expressions of the Green’s functions. The aim of the present work consists in discovering some universal properties of the Green’s functions in question, which reduce enormously the difficulties arising in various applications. The universality mentioned here means that the properties are not depend on the geometrical and physical properties of the configuration. To this end one considers first the case when the domain is partially-homogeneous. Then the results are generalized to the most general case. To show the importance of the universal properties in question, they are applied to an inverse initial-value problem connected with photo-acoustic tomography.

Diagnostics of bronchopulmonary diseases through Mahalanobis distance-based absorption spectral analysis of exhaled air

Accurate diagnosis of different bronchopul- monary diseases is important in clinical practice. This study involved 20 healthy volunteers and 77 patients with bronchopulmonary diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease （COPD）, bronchial asthma, pulmonary tuberculosis, and community-acquired pneumonia. The absorption spectrum of exhaled air samples was recorded on an intra-cavity photo-acoustic gas analyzer （ILPA-1, Special Technologies, Ltd., Russia） with photo-acoustic detectors and CO2 laser with a tuning range from 9.2 to 10.8μm. In conclusion, analysis of the Mahalanobis distance-based absorption spectral profiles of breath air from bronchopulmonary patients and healthy volunteers allows the formulation of a preliminary diagnosis.