We report on the observation and correction of an imaging artifact attributed to the Talbot effect in the context of acousto-optic imaging using structured acoustic waves. When ultrasound waves are emitted with a periodic structure, the Talbot effect produces π-phase shifts of that periodic structure at every half of the Talbot distance in propagation. This unwanted artifact is detrimental to the image reconstruction, which assumes near-field diffraction is negligible. Here, we demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally how imposing an additional phase modulation on the acoustic periodic structure induces a symmetry constraint leading to the annihilation of the Talbot effect. This will significantly improve the acousto-optic image reconstruction quality and allows for an improvement of the reachable spatial resolution of the image.