Analytical solution of the simplified spherical harmonics equations in spherical turbid media

- A methodology for analytically solving the SPN equations is proposed.
- It relies on diagonalization and expressing the solution in spherical coordinates.
- Monte Carlo simulations are incorporated to validate the analytical solutions.

We present for the first time an analytical solution for the simplified spherical harmonics equations (so-called SPN equations) in the case of a steady-state isotropic point source inside a spherical homogeneous absorbing and scattering medium. The SPN equations provide a reliable approximation to the radiative transfer equation for describing light transport inside turbid media. The SPN equations consist of a set of coupled partial differential equations and the eigen method is used to obtain a set of decoupled equations, each resembling the heat equation in the Laplace domain. The equations are solved for the realistic partial reflection boundary conditions accounting for the difference in refractive indices between the turbid medium and its environment (air) as occurs in practical cases of interest in biomedical optics. Specifically, we provide the complete solution methodology for the SP3, which is readily applicable to higher orders as well, and also give results for the SP5. This computationally easy to obtain solution is investigated for different optical properties of the turbid medium. For validation, the solution is also compared to the analytical solution of the diffusion equation and to gold standard Monte Carlo simulation results. The SP3 and SP5 analytical solutions prove to be in good agreement with the Monte Carlo results. This work provides an additional tool for validating numerical solutions of the SPN equations for curved geometries.