To understand the stability of photoacoustic imaging for longitudinal imaging, a repeatability study needs to be performed. In longitudinal imaging, instrumental drifts or other changes over time, are likely to affect images in complex ways. In this study, inter- and intra-day variations of the photoacoustic-ultrasound breast imager are measured with a specially developed test phantom as ground truth. The phantom mimics the breast temperature to be able to measure the coupling medium’s temperature stability and homogeneity in a as realistic as possible setting. Moreover, photoacoustic targets are used to measure the pressure correlated to the pulse-by-pulse laser output energy.
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