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.
Yao
Lei
L
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
Sun
Yao
Y
Jiang
Huabei
H
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*