Forward model of Cerenkov luminescence tomography with the third-order simplified spherical harmonics approximation

Applying Cerenkov luminescence tomography (CLT) to localizing Cerenkov light sources in situ is still in its nascent stage. One of the obstacles hindering the development of the CLT is the lack of dedicated imaging mode. In this contribution, the paper presented a Cerenkov optical imaging mode, in which the propagation of optical photons inside tissues generated by the Vavilov-Cerenkov effect is modeled based on simplified spherical harmonics approximation. As a significantly more transport-like and computational-efficient approximation theory, the performance of the third-order simplified spherical harmonics approximation (SP3) in the CLT forward is investigated in stages. Finally, the performance of the proposed forward model is validated using numerical phantoms and compared with the simulation data based on the Monte Carlo method.