Abstract: Photoacoustic tomography of biological tissue has the advantages of high optical contrast and good spatial resolution, and it has been a currently interesting topic in biological imaging research. Both delay and sum method and backprojection method are extensively used in photoacoustic tomography. The purpose of this study was to experimentally compare the performance of both methods. According frequencydomain analysis, a significant factor that could differentiate them was found. By establishing experiments, the results agreed with the analysis: delay and sum method could provide images where the absorbers are smooth and the details with them could be clearly revealed, and the backprojection method could definitely resolve their boundaries. The results of this study could help to take suit method for reconstruction in practice.