Time-resolved diffuse optical tomography system using an accelerated inverse problem solver

A computationally efficient time-resolved diffuse optical tomography (TR-DOT) prototype was demonstrated using an accelerated inverse problem solver to reconstruct high quality 3D images of highly scattering media such as tissues. The inverse problem solver utilizes seven well-defined points on each experimentally recorded histogram of the distribution time-of-flight (DToF). In this work, the accuracy of the recovered optical properties, and the computational load and time of TR-DOT prototype were investigated using cylindrical turbid phantoms. These phantoms were measured using transmittance geometry under different conditions in multiple experiments to evaluate the performance of this prototype. Overall, the results of evaluation are important in the realization of a real-time and highly accurate TR-DOT system for diffuse optical imaging applications.