A fast forward solver of fluorescence diffuse optical tomography based on the lattice Boltzmann method

Abstract

Fluorescence diffuse optical tomography (FDOT) is a new molecular imaging technology, which uses near-infrared light to excite the fluorophore in tissues. According to the measurements detected on the surface of imaged object, the fluorescent quantum yield as well as lifetime of the fluorescence can be reconstructed. However, the reconstruction of FDOT remains a challenging problem because the conventional forward solvers are time consuming. Thus, a forward model solver that would enable the fast imaging is necessary. This paper describes a new forward solver to simulate the propagation of photons in tissues based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). This is accomplished by propagation photons in tissues guided by the LBM. To evaluate the performance of the proposed LBM, based on the numerical simulation, we compared the light distribution generated by the LBM with the diffusion equation implemented by COMSOL in four different cases. The experimental results indicate that compared to diffusion equation, the LBM can reduce the computation time for the forward solver of FDOT while preserving the similar accuracy.