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4, AUGUST 2005
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I. INTRODUCTION
(a)
(b)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 54, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005
induced by the modulation frequency and the optical parameters like the absorption coefficient and the scattering coefficient.
At each different position, the detector fiber picks up the local
signal and guides it to a high-speed avalanche photodiode; for
more detail, see [6]. For each sourcedetector position, the amplitude ratios and phase differences of these received DPDWs
with respect to the source contain information of possible inhomogeneities in the underlying region. Out of multiple measurements of this kind for various sourcedetector configurations,
a set of equations can be derived to reconstruct slice images of
the investigated volume to determine the position of inhomogeneities. For simplification, our approach is to only use one
source and one detector at a fixed distance, so that they could
easily be integrated in a scan-head. In this paper, we show in
the first instance results obtained by probes with spherical, embedded absorbers.
For the derivation of that set of equations, the propagation of
the DPDW is modeled with the diffusion equation [4] and simplified by certain assumptions, so that inverse calculations can
reveal variations of the absorption inside the observed volume.
The introduced system is compatible with probes that are homogeneously and strongly scattering but only weakly absorbing
the applied light. Absorbing inhomogeneities hidden up to more
than 2 cm (depending on their size) deep under the surface can
be localized. The lack of depth resolution could be improved
to a certain degree by a significant increase of the number of
measurements that would multiply the total effort, which is not
shown in this paper.
III. MATHEMATICAL THEORY
The optical properties of media that are translucent at the generated wavelength of the utilized light source are defined by
and the scattering coefficient ,
the absorption coefficient
respectively. A more illustrative quantity than , however, is
the reduced scattering coefficient , which is reduced to the
isotropically scattering part of , i.e.,
(1)
where
is the expected value of the cosine of scattering
angle .
In this section, we show a mathematical strategy to localize
absorbing spheres in otherwise homogeneously absorbing and
scattering media [1], [4].
Since the propagation of light in sufficiently strong scattering
and only weakly absorbing media can be represented by a diffusion process and the used light is intensity-modulated, the
Helmholtz diffusion equation in the frequency domain is employed [7], [8], [2], which is
(4)
where
is the diffusion coefficient (
) and for
must be small. For average values of soft
validity of (2)
human tissue, i.e.,
cm ,
cm and
at a modulation frequency of
MHz,
cm.
the wavelength of the DPDW becomes
To solve (2) for deviations from the homogeneous absorption
coefficient, we define
(5)
is the homogeneous part and
is the spatially
where
. According to (3), the
varying, additive component of
square of the wavenumber thus can be written as
(6)
Also, the photon density
is represented as a combination
of a homogeneous part
and a heterogeneous, scattered
, which originates at an existing inhomogeneity
part
at that particexcited by the incident photon density
ular location. One common way to make the problem solvable
is to employ the first-order Born approximation
(7)
at position caused by the
That is, the photon density
source at location can be approximated by the sum over a homogeneous part and a heterogeneous part which is supposed not
to strike any inhomogeneity again before reaching the detector
[1], [9]. Thus it follows from (2) together with (7) when the parameter is omitted for simplification
(8)
Because we only want to detect absorption parameter variations,
and
,
the homogeneous equation, considering
is subtracted from (8) and we are left with
(9)
The first-order Born approximation implies that
(9) becomes
so
(2)
(10)
is the photon density at the currently observed position
in the medium,
is the angular modulation frequency,
is the square of the wavenumber of the DPDW that is short
for
We simply assume that the medium is infinite, instead of semiis a solution of (10)
infinite; then the Green function
[10], i.e.,
(3)
(11)
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where
is the distance of a point from the detector position . In the reconstruction algorithm, however, the medium
was considered semi-infinite by introducing image sources. For
details and the influence of boundaries, see [1] and [8].
There is also an exponential approach, the so-called Rytov
approximation [1], [4], where the results would show a slightly
different sensitivity to absorbing inhomogeneities, but this is not
treated in this paper.
Equation (10) can be solved using the Green function of (11)
to arrive at the first-order approximated, continuous solution for
the heterogeneous part of the photon density
(12)
The investigated volume is mathematically discretized into
voxels so that (12) can be written as a system of linear equations where every measurement gives a row
..
.
..
.
..
..
.
..
.
(13)
which must be solved for the deviations of the absorption coeffor all voxels. is the number of independent
ficient
measurements at the various sourcedetector combinations. The
matrix consists of weight functions for each voxel and each
sourcedetector combination . These weight functions are
(14)
is the Green function for the distance between
where
is the incident
the voxel and the detector position and
photon density at due to the source at . The voxels are cubic
with sides of length .
result from the measureThe complex values of
ments of amplitude and delay differences. To obtain
in (13), one must still subtract the homogeneous part
from the measurements. This homogeneous part is in general
not exactly known and only varies when the sourcedetector dismust be estimated properly and
tance is changed. So
subtracted unless the sourcedetector distance stays constant, as
is the case in our system. Furthermore, their absolute values are
not required to only obtain contrast images.
To improve the reconstruction by Born approximations of
, the approximation of first order in (12)
higher order
again. The solution
is substituted by
is
is then obtained by iteration. For the initial value
is calculated to be inserted
supposed to be zero. Then
in the next step
(15)
After solving (13) for the
vector,
lated for every voxel to be inserted into (15).
can be calcu-
Fig. 2. Schematic of the volume for simulation with two embedded, absorbing
spheres ( = 0:3 cm) utilized for the simulations. Grayscale slices show the
phase of the DPDW at the current sourcedetector position.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 54, NO. 4, AUGUST 2005
TABLE I
SET
Fig. 4. Specimen with an acrylic grid of holes to fix the source and detector
fibers at predetermined locations.
volume behind a strong absorber, which leads to defective images in deeper regions. An administrable approach to improve
the depth resolution would probably be to increase the number
of measurements and also to vary the separation between the
source and the detector [10] to obtain different sensitivities regarding the depth. This would, however, again complicate the
scan-head. Moreover, it must be considered that larger distances
between the source and the detector can heavily decrease the
signal-to-noise ratio, which would nullify the advantage of a
better depth resolution immediately.
V. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
For the measurements, a cube formed resin phantom was
molded with sides of 9 cm with an acrylic-glass grid of holes on
the top for fixing the source and detector fibers at predetermined
well-defined locations; see Fig. 4. The optical properties are the
same as summarized in Table I chosen for the simulations. A
perfectly absorbing sphere of 1 cm in diameter has been invisibly hidden inside the cube during production. Its center is at 1.2
cm depth.
Then the grid was fixed somewhere on the surface above the
area of the sphere and a series of measurements was taken,
where the source and the detector fibers were positioned on the
grid at 28 different hole pairs, so that the distance between the
source and the detector was constant at 1.5 cm. The result of a
third-order reconstruction is seen in Fig. 5. Higher order reconstructions would too strongly amplify errors occurring by the
current measurement setup. The coordinates of the sphere relative to the center of the grid resulted in ( 1, 0.5, 1.2), which
were reconstructed fairly well except for the depth or -coordinate, of course, as discussed before.
The injected light was produced by a laserdiode at
nm and a power of 8 mW. For the diameter of
the used fiber of 1 mm, this results in a power density of about
1 W cm , which is even slightly under the allowable limit of
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REFERENCES