Deep learning (DL) shows promise for quantitating anatomical features and functional parameters of tissues in quantitative optoacoustic tomography (QOAT), but its application to deep tissue is hindered by a lack of ground truth data. We propose DL-based "QOAT-Net,"which functions without labeled experimental data: A dual-path convolutional network estimates absorption coefficients after training with data-label pairs generated via unsupervised "simulation-to-experiment"data translation. In simulations, phantoms, and ex vivo and in vivo tissues, QOAT-Net affords quantitative absorption images with high spatial resolution. This approach makes DL-based QOAT and other imaging applications feasible in the absence of ground truth data.
GrantsEuropean Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme Key Fund of Shenzhen Natural Science Foundation Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Commission National Natural Science Foundation of China