Photoacoustic (PA) wavefront shaping (WFS; PAWS) could allow focusing light deep in living tissue, increasing the penetration depth of biomedical optics techniques. PAWS experiments have demonstrated focusing light through rigid scattering media. However, focusing deep in tissue is significantly more challenging. To examine the scale of this challenge, a computational model of the propagation of coherent light in tissue was developed to simulate the focusing of light via PAWS. To demonstrate the model, it was used to simulate focusing in an 800 µm thick tissue-like medium. To show the utility of the model, the focusing was repeated in different conditions illustrative of simplified PAWS experiments involving different spatial resolutions. As expected, a finer spatial resolution led to a brighter focus. By providing a simulation platform for studying PAWS, this work could pave the way to developing systems that can focus light in tissue.
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