De-aberration for transcranial photoacoustic computed tomography through an adult human skull

Abstract: Noninvasive transcranial photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) of the human brain, despite its clinical potential as a complementary technology to functional MRI, remains impeded by the acoustic distortion induced by the human skull. The distortion, which is attributed to the markedly different material properties of the skull relative to soft tissue, results in heavily aberrated PACT images -- a problem that has remained unsolved for the past two decades. Herein, we report the first successful experimental demonstration of the de-aberration of PACT images through an ex-vivo adult human skull using a homogeneous elastic model for the skull. Using only the geometry, position, and orientation of the skull, we faithfully de-aberrate the PACT images of light-absorbing phantoms acquired through an ex-vivo human skull for different levels of phantom complexity and positions. We also demonstrate the generality of our results by attaining a similar extent of de-aberration through a second ex-vivo human skull. Our work addresses the longstanding challenge of skull-induced aberrations in transcranial PACT and advances the field towards unlocking the full potential of transcranial human brain PACT.