Optoacoustic tomography (OAT) conventionally relies on curved detectors to maximize the sensitivity and lateral resolution. Here, we present an alternative paradigm to OAT that uses an acoustic mask with coded apertures and a flat piezoelectric detector to create a virtual detector array with a high angular acceptance, achieved by diffraction from the apertures, and sensitivity, achieved by multiplexing the signals from all apertures. Using this approach, we created a 2D virtual array with 1763 elements, where the signal for each virtual element was obtained by applying a linear transformation on the measured data. We experimentally demonstrated our virtual array by performing OAT of a complex 3D object, achieving axial and lateral resolutions of 150 μm and 500 μm in a flat detection geometry, demonstrating an image quality comparable to the one achieved with curved detection geometries. In terms of sensitivity, our approach led to a 21-fold gain in the measurement SNR in comparison to a single detector with the same size of a single element of our virtual array.
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