On Depth Resolution in Photoacoustic Imaging

The talk is concerned with the stability issue in determining absorption and diffusion coefficients in quantitative photoacoustic imaging. Assuming that the optical wave is generated by point sources in a region where the optical coefficients are known, we derive Hölder stability estimates of the inversion. These results show that the reconstruction of the optical coefficients is stable in the region close to the optical illumination sources, and deteriorate exponentially far away. Our stability estimates confirm known experimental observations, and give a mathematical quantification of the depth resolution in photoacoustic imaging.