Quantitative Tomography Using Coupled Physics of Waves

ongoing

Tomographic images are a valuable tool in various applications of medicine and biomedicine, industry and in security applications. Although efficient tomographic imaging techniques exist, development of new modalities that would overcome the limitations of the existing techniques are required. Overall, there is a need for development of new tomographic techniques that would provide quantitative information of unknown parameters of interest, such as tomographic images on the concentration of molecules. In particular, information on the reliability of the tomographic images is required. The objective of the project is to develop quantitative tomographic imaging technique based on coupled physics of waves. In coupled physics imaging, contrast and resolution originating from different physical phenomena are combined. In the project, light, microwaves and ultrasound, i.e. waves, will be utilised through photoacoustic, thermoacoustic and acousto-optic effects. These techniques will be developed to produce tomographic images with an outstanding quantitative contrast in the sense of statistical information and modelling of uncertainties, combined with superior resolution and imaging depth. Most tomographic imaging techniques are ill-posed problems that need to be approached in the framework of inverse problems. In the project, a Bayesian approach to ill-posed inverse problems, which supports the quantitative nature of the problem, will be taken. In the project, mathematical modelling and computational methods will be developed in close connection with experimental system development. The research is founded on a strong understanding of the underlying physics of coupled physics problems, knowledge on instrumentation on the related fields and experimental tomography, and state-of-the-art methods of computational inverse mathematics, that all come together in the PI’s research group.