Transport-based quantitative photoacoustic tomography: simulations and experiments.
In this paper we describe a method for quantitative photoacoustic tomography (qPAT) based on the photon radiative transfer equation (RTE) coupled with the Helmholtz photoacoustic wave equation. Considerable simulations and tissue-like phantom experiments are conducted to evaluate transport-based qPAT in comparison with diffusion-based qPAT. In these comparative simulations and experiments, we systematically examine the effects of the ratio of mu(a)/mu'(s) (absorption/reduced scattering coefficient), the anisotropy factor (g) and the imaging domain size on the transport- and diffusion-based photoacoustic image reconstruction. The results obtained show that transport-based qPAT allows for clearly more accurate recovery of the absolute absorption coefficient images of heterogeneous media over diffusion-based qPAT for all the cases examined and provides considerably improved image quality for cases where the photon diffusion approximation (DA) is invalid.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Lei
L
Yao
Yao
Y
Sun
Huabei
H
Jiang
D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D054459:Elasticity Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014054:Tomography / Q000379:methods*