Photoacoustic microscopy image resolution enhancement via directional total variation regularization

Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) is recognized as a powerful tool for various microcirculation system studies. To improve the spatial resolution for the PAM images, the requirements of the system will always be increased correspondingly. Without additional cost of the system, we address the problem of improving the resolution of PAM images by integrating a deconvolution model with a directional total variation regularization. Additionally, we present a primal-dual-based algorithm to solve the associated optimization problem efficiently. Results from both test images and some PAM images studies validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in enhancing the spatial resolution. We expect the proposed technique to be an alternative resolution enhancement tool for some important biomedical applications.