Optical wavelength selection for improved spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging

Spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging has the potential to become a powerful tool that can estimate distributions of optically absorbing chromophores in the body. We have developed an algorithm to select imaging wavelengths for spectroscopic photoacoustics given the spectra of expected chromophores. The algorithm uses the smallest singular value of a matrix constructed from the absorption spectra as a criterion to remove extraneous wavelengths. The method performed significantly better than an approach where evenly spaced wavelengths were used in the presence of noise and wavelength-dependent attenuation of light in tissue. Finally, the algorithm was applied to photoacoustic imaging of a phantom containing indocyanine green dye and silica-coated gold nanorods, demonstrating significant improvements in the ability to estimate relative contrast agent concentrations compared to the case where evenly spaced wavelengths were chosen. In summary, our work provides a versatile framework to select optical wavelengths and evaluate sets of absorbers for spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging.