Quantitative photoacoustic tomography based on the radiative transfer equation

We describe a method for quantitative photoacoustic tomography (PAT) based on the radiative transfer equation (RTE) coupled with the Helmholtz photoacoustic wave equation. This RTE-based quantitative PAT allows for accurate recovery of absolute absorption coefficient images of heterogeneous media and provides significantly improved image reconstruction for the cases where the photon diffusion approximation may fail. The method and associated finite element reconstruction algorithm are validated using a series of tissuelike phantom experiments. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America