Frequency domain optical tomography using a Monte Carlo perturbation method

A frequency domain Monte Carlo method is applied to near-infrared optical tomography, where an intensity-modulated light source with a given modulation frequency is used to reconstruct optical properties. The frequency domain reconstruction technique allows for better separation between the scattering and absorption properties of inclusions, even for ill-posed inverse problems, due to cross-talk between the scattering and absorption reconstructions. The frequency domain Monte Carlo calculation for light transport in an absorbing and scattering medium has thus far been analyzed mostly for the reconstruction of optical properties in simple layered tissues. This study applies a Monte Carlo calculation algorithm, which can handle complex-valued particle weights for solving a frequency domain transport equation, to optical tomography in two-dimensional heterogeneous tissues. The Jacobian matrix that is needed to reconstruct the optical properties is obtained by a first-order “differential operator” technique, which involves less variance than the conventional “correlated sampling” technique. The numerical examples in this paper indicate that the newly proposed Monte Carlo method provides reconstructed results for the scattering and absorption coefficients that compare favorably with the results obtained from conventional deterministic or Monte Carlo methods.