Significance Photoacoustic imaging is an emerging imaging modality that combines the high contrast of optical imaging and the high penetration of acoustic imaging. However, the strong focusing of the laser beam in optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) leads to a limited depth-of-field (DoF). Aim Here, a volumetric photoacoustic information fusion method was proposed to achieve large volumetric photoacoustic imaging at low cost. Approach First, the initial decision map was built through the focus detection based on the proposed three-dimensional Laplacian operator. Majority filter-based consistency verification and Gaussian filter-based map smoothing were then utilized to generate the final decision map for the construction of photoacoustic imaging with extended DoF. Results The performance of the proposed method was tested to show that our method can expand the limited DoF by a factor of 1.7 without the sacrifice of lateral resolution. Four sets of multi-focus vessel data at different noise levels were fused to verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. Conclusions The proposed method can efficiently extend the DoF of OR-PAM under different noise levels.

中文翻译：

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用于增强光声显微镜的噪声不敏感体积融合方法。

意义光声成像是一种新兴的成像方式，结合了光学成像的高对比度和声成像的高穿透性。然而，光学分辨率光声显微镜（OR-PAM）中激光束的强聚焦导致景深（DoF）有限。目的 提出一种体积光声信息融合方法，以低成本实现大体积光声成像。方法首先，通过基于所提出的三维拉普拉斯算子的焦点检测来构建初始决策图。然后利用基于多数滤波器的一致性验证和基于高斯滤波器的图平滑来生成最终决策图，用于构建具有扩展自由度的光声成像。结果对该方法的性能进行了测试，结果表明我们的方法可以在不牺牲横向分辨率的情况下将有限的 DoF 扩大 1.7 倍。融合四组不同噪声水平的多焦点血管数据，验证了该方法的有效性和鲁棒性。结论所提出的方法可以有效地扩展不同噪声水平下OR-PAM的DoF。