Objective To investigate the feasibility of photoacoustic imaging for quantitative evaluation of blood oxgen saturation changes in skeletal muscle injured by blunt contusion. Methods Twenty-five SD rats were randomly divided into 5 groups: normal control group and 1, 2, 3 and 7 d post-injury groups, with 5 rats in each group. The skeletal muscle blunt contusion model was established by striking the right hind limb with a heavy object in each injury groups, and the rats in the normal control group were not given any treatment. Color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI) was used to observe the blood supply of the skeletal muscle of injured area at each time point in the injury groups and the corresponding sites in the normal control group, and Alder semi-quantitative grading was used to record the blood supply parameters of each group. The photoacoustic imaging mode was performed to measure the average blood oxygen saturation and the total blood oxygen saturation within each region of interest. The correlations between Alder semi-quantitative grading of CDFI and average blood oxygen saturation and total blood oxygen saturation were analyzed by Fisher exact test. Results The CDFI blood flow Alder semi-quantitative grades of skeletal muscle in the normal control group and 1, 2, 3 and 7 d post-injury groups were Ⅰ, 0 -Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅱ-Ⅲ and Ⅲ, respectively. The average blood oxygen saturation and total blood oxygen saturation in the 2, 3 and 7 d post-injury groups were significantly higher than those in the normal control group and the 1 d post-injury group (all P＜0.05), and those in the 7 d post-injury group were significantly higher than the 2 and 3 d post-injury groups (all P＜0.05), while there was no statistical significance between the 2 and 3 d post-injury groups (both P＞0.05). The CDFI blood flow Alder semi-quantitative grading results were: grades 0 to Ⅰ in 10 and grades Ⅱ to Ⅲ in 15 of 25 rats. There were 11 rats with average blood oxygen saturation＜ 55%, including 8 rats with grades 0 to Ⅰ; and 14 rats with average blood oxygen saturation≥55%, including 12 rats with grades Ⅱ to Ⅲ. There were 11 rats with total blood oxygen saturation＜55%, including 9 rats with grades 0 to Ⅰ; and 14 rats with total blood oxygen saturation≥55%, including 13 rats with grades Ⅱ to Ⅲ. CDFI blood flow Alder semi-quantitative grading was positively correlated with both average blood oxygen saturation and total blood oxygen saturation (P＝0.005, 0.002). Conclusion Photoacoustic imaging can dynamically assess the changes of oxygen saturation in the skeletal muscle with blunt contusion at different time points, which correlates well with CDFI blood flow Alder semi-quantitative grading.