Thermoacoustic imaging (TAI) is a non-ionizing and non-invasive imaging method, which combines the merits of high ultrasound imaging resolution with high microwave imaging contrast. In TAI, a short non-ionizing microwave pulse irradiates tissues to induce a small temperature rise, which consequently causes thermoelastic expansion to generate TA signals. By using an image reconstruction algorithm, TAI can then recover the microwave absorption distribution inside the tissue and further distinguish abnormal areas from background normal tissues. TAI for breast cancer detection is the main purpose of this study, the basic theory of TAI was introduced at first, especially the RCB reconstruction algorithm for TAI. After that, in this dissertation, two sets of thermoacoustic imaging systems were developed, which named thermoacoustic tomography and ultra-short pulse based high resolution TAI. According to experiments and theoretical studies carried out in this dissertation, the feasibility of thermoacoustic imaging method by Robust Capon Beam-former (RCB) for breast cancer detection before its clinical investigation is fully validated. Due to high imaging performance needs for the early detection of breast cancer. Based on the advantages of TAI, the potential applications of TAI for finger joints and brain diseases diagnosing are explored, which is opening up a new field for TAI.
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