Systems and methods for thermoacoustic transducer optimization

1. A method for determining a thermoacoustic transducer functionality of a thermoacoustic imaging system, wherein the thermoacoustic imaging system comprises at least one radio-frequency source, at least one thermoacoustic transducer, and at least one processor, the method comprising:

(A) placing an object in a field of view;

(B) generating at least one impulse within the field of view, using the thermoacoustic imaging system with a first selected transducer functionality, wherein the first selected transducer functionality defines transducer geometry, arrangement of transducer elements, or distribution of transducer dements, further wherein the first selected transducer functionality works with a selected configuration of transducer elements based upon transducer elements' center-frequency and bandwidth, further wherein the at least one impulse is generated by directing radio-frequency energy pulses toward the field of view and inducing thermoacoustic signals from the object;

(C) acquiring, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, data from the at least one impulse;

(D) reconstructing, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, the acquired data to generate N-dimensional impulse responses based upon respective channel responses, respective view responses, and a function of the acquired data;

(E) generating, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, an N-dimensional transform based upon the N-dimensional impulse responses;

(F) utilizing, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, the N-dimensional transform to generate an N-dimensional value that corresponds to a frequency response that is a function of the first selected transducer functionality;

(G) iteratively performing steps (A) through (F) with different selected transducer functionalities substituted for the first selected transducer functionality, wherein the different selected transducer functionalities are different from the selected transducer elements' center-frequency and bandwidth and are also different in one of a different transducer geometry, arrangement of transducer elements, or distribution of transducer elements; and

(H) configuring, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, a final thermoacoustic transducer functionality based upon the generated N-dimensional values.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising denoising and correcting, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, to generate corrected time-series data for each transducer element.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising: deconvolving the corrected time-series data; and applying, by the thermoacoustic imaging system, 2-D denoising and artifact correction algorithms to generate corrected deconvolved time-series data.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising generating transducer element specific kernels by steps comprising:

estimating an impulse response for each transducer element;

filtering the estimated impulse response of each element based upon prior transducer element knowledge; and

applying 1-dimensional noise and artifact reduction to the filtered estimated impulse response of each element.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the prior transducer element knowledge is selected from a group consisting of a bandwidth of each transducer in the thermoacoustic imaging system, a center frequency of each transducer in the thermoacoustic imaging system, a transducer directivity, and/or a value derived from a noise test.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the N-dimensional transform utilizes a subset of the acquired data.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the N-dimensional value for the first selected transducer functionality and the N-dimensional value for a second selected transducer functionality define an absolute metric which measures a quality of the N-dimensional transforms.