Deep Learning for Fast Photoacoustic Wave Simulations

Photoacoustic tomography involves absorption of pulsed light and subsequent generation of ultrasound, which when detected using an array of sensors can produce clinically useful images. Simulation tools for photoacoustic wave propagation have played a key role in advancing photoacoustic imaging by providing quantitative and qualitative insights into parameters affecting image quality. Classical methods for numerically solving the photoacoustic wave equation rely on a fine discretization of space and can become computationally expensive for large computational grids. In this work, we apply Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) networks as a fast data-driven deep learning method for solving the 2D photoacoustic wave equation in a homogeneous medium. Comparisons between the FNO network and pseudo-spectral time domain approach demonstrated that the FNO network generated comparable simulations with small errors and was an order of magnitude faster. Moreover, the FNO network was generalizable and could generate simulations not observed in the training data.