Artifacts in photoacoustic imaging

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is rapidly moving from the laboratory to the clinic, increasing the pressure to understand factors that confound image interpretation, such as noise and image artifacts, which might adversely affect patient care. Over the past five years, landmark studies have shown the potential clinical utility of PAI, from breast cancer to Crohn’s disease and neuromuscular dystrophies, leading to recent FDA approval and CE marking of PAI devices. Here, with a view to better presenting and understanding confounding factors in PAI that could influence image interpretation, we will describe the cause and effects of several artifacts present in PA systems, and giving schematic overviews of their appearance to ease identification.