Impact of inhomogeneous optical scattering coefficient distribution on recovery of optical absorption coefficient maps using tomographic photoacoustic data

We present a study through extensive simulation that considers the impact of inhomogeneous optical scattering coefficient distribution on recovery of optical absorption coefficient maps using tomographic photoacoustic data collected from media mimicking breast tissue. We found that while the impact of scattering heterogeneities/targets is modest on photoacoustic recovery of optical absorption coefficients, the impact of scattering contrast caused by adipose tissue, a layer of normal tissue along the boundary of the breast, is dramatic on reconstruction of optical absorption coefficients using photoacoustic data—up to 25.8% relative error in recovering the absorption coefficient is estimated in such cases. To overcome this problem, we propose a new method to enhance photoacoustic recovery of the optical absorption coefficient in heterogeneous media by considering inhomogeneous scattering coefficient distribution provided by diffuse optical tomography (DOT). Results from extensive simulations show that photoacoustic recovery of absorption coefficient maps can be improved considerably with a priori scattering information from DOT. (paper)