Enhanced Electroacoustic Tomography with Supervised Learning for Real-time Electroporation Monitoring

Background: Nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEF)-based electroporation is a new therapy modality potentially synergized with radiation therapy to improve treatment outcomes. To verify its treatment accuracy intraoperatively, electroacoustic tomography (EAT) has been developed to monitor in-vivo electric energy deposition by detecting ultrasound signals generated by nsPEFs in real-time. However, utility of EAT is limited by image distortions due to the limited-angle view of ultrasound transducers. Methods: This study proposed a supervised learning-based workflow to address the ill-conditioning in EAT reconstruction. Electroacoustic signals were detected by a linear array and initially reconstructed into EAT images, which were then fed into a deep learning model for distortion correction. In this study, 56 distinct electroacoustic data sets from nsPEFs of different intensities and geometries were collected experimentally, avoiding simulation-to-real-world variations. Forty-six data were used for model training and 10 for testing. The model was trained using supervised learning, enabled by a custom rotating platform to acquire paired full-view and single-view signals for the same electric field. Results: The proposed method considerably improved the image quality of linear array-based EAT, generating pressure maps with accurate and clear structures. Quantitatively, the enhanced single-view images achieved a low-intensity error (RMSE: 0.018), high signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR: 35.15), and high structural similarity (SSIM: 0.942) compared to the reference full-view images. Conclusions: This study represented a pioneering stride in achieving high-quality EAT using a single linear array in an experimental environment, which improves EAT's utility in real-time monitoring for nsPEF-based electroporation therapy.