Simulation of a pulsed light propagation in the prostate phantom

In recent years, more and more Americans are diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the current detection methods still have some disadvantages. Photoacoustic imaging, as a new non-invasive imaging technique, has the capable of imaging complex tissue and owns the ability of early tumor imaging. And the photoacoustic signal of the tumor is bound up with its light energy distribution. In this paper, Monte Carlo method was used to simulate the light propagation in the prostate phantom. The pictures of light energy distribution by the irradiation of a pulsed laser were obtained. With the pulsed laser, according to the absorption coefficient of tumor, the local energy temporal changes in prostate can be illustrated. As we known, the local photoacoustic signal has a relationship with the change of light energy. Then we can see the influence of photoacoustic signal under the changes of the absorption coefficient of tumor.