Quantitative photoacoustic tomography for simultaneous reconstruction of optical spectral parameters and speed of sound

In this work, we study the inverse problem of quantitative photoacoustic tomography and propose a methodology to simultaneously reconstruct optical spectral parameters and the speed of sound from photoacoustic waves. The developed methodology is based on a coupled forward model, incorporating spectral models representing the wavelength dependence of optical absorption and scattering, a model for light propagation and absorption, and a model for acoustic wave propagation. The inverse problem is solved using a gradient-based algorithm that updates the parameters using an alternating iterative process and utilises multiple different discretisations. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate that simultaneous reconstruction of optical spectral parameters and the speed of sound in quantitative photoacoustic tomography is feasible when several wavelengths of light and illumination patterns are used. Furthermore, the simulations demonstrate that reference approaches, where either the speed of sound or the scattering parameters are assumed as constants, can produce artefacts in the reconstructed images.

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