Spectral power density of the random excitation for the photoacoustic wave equation

The superposition of the Green's function and its time reversal can be extracted from the photoacoustic point sources applying the representation theorems of the convolution and correlation type. It is shown that photoacoustic pressure waves at locations of random point sources can be calculated with the solution of the photoacoustic wave equation and utilization of the continuity and the discontinuity conditions of the pressure waves in the frequency domain although the pressure waves cannot be measured at these locations directly. Therefore, with the calculated pressure waves at the positions of the sources, the spectral power density can be obtained for any system consisting of two random point sources. The methodology presented here can also be generalized to any finite number of point like sources. The physical application of this study includes the utilization of the cross-correlation of photoacoustic waves to extract functional information associated with the flow dynamics inside the tissue. (C) 2014 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.