The estimation of a unique solution for steady-state diffuse optical tomography by applying mechanical pressure

•An approach to estimate the unique solution for steady-state diffuse optical tomography.•Generate a number of constraint equation for solving the regularized inverse problem.•The efficiency of this method is experimentally tested.

The accuracy of diffuse optical tomography (DOT) highly depends on two important factors: first, the knowledge of the tissue optical heterogeneities for accurate modeling of light propagation, and second, the uniqueness of reconstructed values of optical properties. Previous studies illustrated that the inverse problem associated with steady-state DOT does not have unique solutions. In this study, we propose a simple method that can be applied to improve this challenging problem of steady-state DOT. In this method, we study the propagation of photons through compressed breast phantoms. The applied mechanical pressure can change the values of optical properties and this pressure dependence of optical properties as a set of constraint equations can be used to improve the inverse problem. The applied pressure can help us to restrict the distribution of possible values of depth and radius of defect inside breast phantom reconstructed by inverse problem.