Near infra-red imaging with the radiative transfer equation: A comparative study with finite elements

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of near infra-red optical tomography with the radiative transfer equation. The forward model is based on the least square finite element method associated to the discrete ordinates method. Comparative tests of reconstruction on noise free data of optical properties are carried out. The results show as expected that increasing the number of degrees of freedom of the coefficients improves the quality of the reconstruction. It is also seen that using discontinuous elements for the coefficients, gives better results than continuous one as they are well suited for handling the discontinuities in the coefficients field which is usually encountered in real applications.