Image reconstruction in diffuse optical tomography based on simplified spherical harmonics approximation

The use of higher order approximations to the Radiative transport equation, through simplified spherical harmonics expansion (SPN) in optical tomography are presented. It is shown that, although the anisotropy factor can be modeled in the forward problem, its sensitivity to the measured boundary data is limited to superficial regions and more importantly, due to uniqueness of the inverse problem it cannot be determined using frequency domain data. Image reconstruction through the use of higher ordered models is presented. It is demonstrated that at higher orders (for example SP7) the image reconstruction becomes highly under-determined due to the large increase in the number of unknowns which cannot be adequately recovered. However, reconstruction of diffuse parameters, namely optical absorption and reduced scatter have shown to be more accurate where only the sensitivity matrix used in the inverse problem is based on SPN method and image reconstruction is limited to these two diffuse parameters. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America