# Estimation of blood oxygenation with learned spectral decoloring for quantitative photoacoustic imaging (LSD-qPAI)

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05839 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.05839/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Feb 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [A study of why we need to reassess full reference image quality assessment with medical images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19097/) (2024)
- [Video-rate multispectral imaging in laparoscopic surgery: First-in-human application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13901/) (2021)
- [Semantic segmentation of multispectral photoacoustic images using deep learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09624/) (2021)
- [Photoacoustic image synthesis with generative adversarial networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15510/) (2021)
- [Quantitative photoacoustic oximetry imaging by multiple illumination learned spectral decoloring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11201/) (2021)
- [Application-driven Validation of Posteriors in Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09764/) (2023)
- [Application of a Virtual Imaging Framework for Investigating a Deep Learning-Based Reconstruction Method for 3D Quantitative Photoacoustic Computed Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03431/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

One of the main applications of photoacoustic (PA) imaging is the recovery of functional tissue properties, such as blood oxygenation (sO2). This is typically achieved by linear spectral unmixing of relevant chromophores from multispectral photoacoustic images. Despite the progress that has been made towards quantitative PA imaging (qPAI), most sO2 estimation methods yield poor results in realistic settings. In this work, we tackle the challenge by employing learned spectral decoloring for quantitative photoacoustic imaging (LSD-qPAI) to obtain quantitative estimates for blood oxygenation. LSD-qPAI computes sO2 directly from pixel-wise initial pressure spectra Sp0, which are vectors comprised of the initial pressure at the same spatial location over all recorded wavelengths. Initial results suggest that LSD-qPAI is able to obtain accurate sO2 estimates directly from multispectral photoacoustic measurements in silico and plausible estimates in vivo.