Simultaneous reconstruction of absorbed optical energy density and speed of sound distributions in photoacoustic computed tomography

An important and interesting question in photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is whether the absorbed optical energy density distribution, A(r), and the speed of sound distribution, c(r), can both be accurately determined from the measured photoacoustic data alone. However, in many cases c(r) is unknown or cannot be accurately estimated. Therefore, it would be practically beneficial if A(r) and c(r) can be jointly reconstructed from the measurements. In this work, we propose a reconstruction approach to the joint reconstruction of both properties in PACT.