Prediction of sensitivity thresholds in optoacoustic tomography

Since optoacoustic tomography is considered a high-resolution modality, determination of the absolute detection limit, as it relates to the sensitivity of biomarker detection is not straightforward. This is due to the fact that experimental determination of the sensitivity as a function of target size remains difficult since no established technique exists so far to reproducibly create very small targets containing well-defined concentrations of markers. We combine theoretical analysis with imaging results for large amounts of the marker and place the measured value on the appropriate parameter-dependent signal intensity curve. A performance estimate of the particular experimental system and the expected signal-to-noise-ratio for smaller amounts of markers can then be made.