Modeling thermometry image perturbations during photoacoustic imaging-guided photothermal therapy

During hyperthermia treatments, temperature monitoring is needed to prevent overheating, which could cause evaporation and carbonization of tissue, and to focus, as much as possible, the thermal damage on the targeted tissue. Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has been shown to be able to monitor temperature during hyperthermia treatments. However, the accuracy of the monitoring can be reduced as image perturbations accumulate over time. In this work, we model perturbations that may occur during photoacoustic thermometry, with the goal of developing compensation algorithms to achieve more reliable images. The model consists of tumor tissue undergoing laser photothermal therapy (PTT) and the perturbations introduced in the model were tissue movement and external noise. This work represents the first step towards a perturbation-compensated photoacoustic thermometry algorithm.