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Reflection artifacts caused by acoustic inhomogeneities are a critical problem in epi-mode biomedical photoacoustic imaging. High light fluence beneath the probe results in photoacoustic transients, which propagate into the tissue and reflect back from echogenic structures. These reflection artifacts cause problems in image interpretation and significantly impact the contrast and imaging depth. We recently proposed a method called PAFUSion (Photoacoustic-guided focused ultrasound) to identify such reflection artifacts in photoacoustic imaging. In its initial version, PAFUSion mimics the inward-travelling wavefield from small blood vessel-like PA sources by applying ultrasound pulses focused towards these sources, and thus provides a way to identify the resulting reflection artifacts. In this work, we demonstrate reduction of reflection artifacts in phantoms and in vivo measurements on human volunteers. In view of …