Considering sources and detectors distributions for quantitative photoacoustic tomography

Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is a hybrid imaging modality that takes advantage of high optical contrast brought by optical imaging and high spatial resolution brought by ultrasound imaging. However, the quantification in photoacoustic imaging is challenging. Multiple optical illumination approach has proven to achieve uncoupling of diffusion and absorption effects. In this paper, this protocol is adopted and synthetic photoacoustic data, blurred with some noise, were generated. The influence of the distribution of optical sources and transducers on the reconstruction of the absorption and diffusion coefficients maps is studied. Specific situations with limited view angles were examined. The results show multiple illuminations with a wide field improve the reconstructions.