High-resolution imaging in acoustic microscopy using deep learning

Abstract

Acoustic microscopy is a cutting-edge label-free imaging technology that allows us to see the surface and interior structure of industrial and biological materials. The acoustic image is created by focusing high-frequency acoustic waves on the object and then detecting reflected signals. On the other hand, the quality of the acoustic image’s resolution is influenced by the signal-to-noise ratio, the scanning step size, and the frequency of the transducer. Deep learning-based high-resolution imaging in acoustic microscopy is proposed in this paper. To illustrate four times resolution improvement in acoustic images, five distinct models are used: SRGAN, ESRGAN, IMDN, DBPN-RES-MR64-3, and SwinIR. The trained model’s performance is assessed by calculating the PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and SSIM (Structural Similarity Index) between the network-predicted and ground truth images. To avoid the model from over-fitting, transfer learning was incorporated during the procedure. SwinIR had average SSIM and PSNR values of 0.95 and 35, respectively. The model was also evaluated using a biological sample from Reindeer Antler, yielding an SSIM score of 0.88 and a PSNR score of 32.93. Our framework is relevant to a wide range of industrial applications, including electronic production, material micro-structure analysis, and other biological applications in general.

Keywords

• acoustic imaging
• scanning acoustic microscopy
• high-resolution imaging
• machine learning
• transfer learning.