  Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) is an emerging biomedical "imaging from
coupled physics" technique, in which the image contrast is due to optical
absorption, but the information is carried to the surface of the tissue as
ultrasound pulses. Many algorithms and formulae for PAT image reconstruction
have been proposed for the case when a complete data set is available. In many
practical imaging scenarios, however, it is not possible to obtain the full
data, or the data may be sub-sampled for faster data acquisition. In such
cases, image reconstruction algorithms that can incorporate prior knowledge to
ameliorate the loss of data are required. Hence, recently there has been an
increased interest in using variational image reconstruction. A crucial
ingredient for the application of these techniques is the adjoint of the PAT
forward operator, which is described in this article from physical, theoretical
and numerical perspectives. First, a simple mathematical derivation of the
adjoint of the PAT forward operator in the continuous framework is presented.
Then, an efficient numerical implementation of the adjoint using a k-space time
domain wave propagation model is described and illustrated in the context of
variational PAT image reconstruction, on both 2D and 3D examples including
inhomogeneous sound speed. The principal advantage of this analytical adjoint
over an algebraic adjoint (obtained by taking the direct adjoint of the
particular numerical forward scheme used) is that it can be implemented using
currently available fast wave propagation solvers.
