Toward accurate quantitative photoacoustic imaging: learning vascular blood oxygen saturation in three dimensions.

ABSTRACT: SIGNIFICANCE:Two-dimensional (2-D) fully convolutional neural networks have been shown capable of producing maps of sO2 from 2-D simulated images of simple tissue models. However, their potential to produce accurate estimates in vivo is uncertain as they are limited by the 2-D nature of the training data when the problem is inherently three-dimensional (3-D), and they have not been tested with realistic images. AIM:To demonstrate the capability of deep neural networks to process whole 3-D images and output 3-D maps of vascular sO2 from realistic tissue models/images. APPROACH:Two separate fully convolutional neural networks were trained to produce 3-D maps of vascular blood oxygen saturation and vessel positions from multiwavelength simulated images of tissue models. RESULTS:The mean of the absolute difference between the true mean vessel sO2 and the network output for 40 examples was 4.4% and the standard deviation was 4.5%. CONCLUSIONS:3-D fully convolutional networks were shown capable of producing accurate sO2 maps using the full extent of spatial information contained within 3-D images generated under conditions mimicking real imaging scenarios. We demonstrate that networks can cope with some of the confounding effects present in real images such as limited-view artifacts and have the potential to produce accurate estimates in vivo.

SUBMITTER: Bench C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7443711 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature