Characteristics of Weight Function in a Steady-state Diffusion Optical Tomography

Abstract

For practical use of image reconstruction in a steady-state diffusion optical tomography, a weight function is analytically derived in a linear perturbation approach. We show that the weight function at any voxel in the medium is given by a product of a sensitivity function at the voxel and a mean optical pathlength in the voxel, whose two parameters have independent behavior to each other. By use of Monte Carlo simulation, it is found that the mean path length is easily obtained without stochastic calculation by scattering coefficient in the medium. Weight function derived by the proposed method is in good agreement with exact solution based on Monte Carlo method.