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Fluence compensation for real-time spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging

Recently we demonstrated an integrated photoacoustic (PA) and ultrasound (PAUS) system using a kHz-rate wavelength-tunable laser and a swept-beam delivery approach. It irradiates a medium using a narrow laser beam sweeping at high repetition rate over the desired imaging area, in contrast to the conventional PA approach using broad beam illumination at a low repetition. One significant advantage of this approach is that the fundamental problem of decoupling local light absorption at a point from optical fluence at the same point can be solved. Here, we present a fluence compensation method and demonstrate its performance in phantom studies. We adopted analytic fluence models, extending diffusion theory for the case of a pencil beam obliquely incident on a medium, and developed robust methods to estimate medium optical parameters using PA measurements acquired from multiple irradiation positions. We conducted comprehensive simulation tests and phantom studies using well-known contrast-agents to validate the reliability of the fluence models and spectral corrections.