A paraxial approach for the inverse problem of vibro-acoustic imaging in frequency domain

Abstract: This paper presents a paraxial modeling approach for vibro-acoustography, a high-frequency ultrasound imaging technique that makes use of the excited low-frequency field to achieve a higher resolution while avoiding speckles. We start from a general second order wave equation, introduce a second order perturbation and make use of a paraxial change of variables to pass over to directed beams. Depending on the relation between the second order perturbation and the directivity of the beams this leads to different systems of PDEs that involve a spatially variable parameter governing the interaction of the incoming beams to generate the propagating acoustic field. We then consider the inverse problem of determining this parameter for one of these models where we present a Landweber-Kaczmarz reconstruction method to obtain a spatial image of the region of interest.