Controlled Monte Carlo method for light propagation in tissue of semi-infinite geometry

In-silico investigation towards the non-invasive optical detection of blood lactate

This paper uses Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the interaction of short-wave infrared (SWIR) light with vascular tissue as a step toward the development of a non-invasive optical sensor for measuring blood lactate in humans. The primary focus of this work was to determine the optimal source-detector separation, penetration depth of light at SWIR wavelengths in tissue, and the optimal light power required for reliable detection of lactate. The investigation also focused on determining the non-linear variations in absorbance of lactate at a few select SWIR wavelengths. SWIR photons only penetrated 1.3 mm and did not travel beyond the hypodermal fat layer. The maximum output power was only 2.51% of the input power, demonstrating the need for a highly sensitive detection system. Simulations optimized a source-detector separation of 1 mm at 1684 nm for accurate measurement of lactate in blood.

Evaluation of path-history-based fluorescence Monte Carlo method for photon migration in heterogeneous media

The path-history-based fluorescence Monte Carlo method used for fluorescence tomography imaging reconstruction has attracted increasing attention. In this paper, we first validate the standard fluorescence Monte Carlo (sfMC) method by experimenting with a cylindrical phantom. Then, we describe a path-history-based decoupled fluorescence Monte Carlo (dfMC) method, analyze different perturbation fluorescence Monte Carlo (pfMC) methods, and compare the calculation accuracy and computational efficiency of the dfMC and pfMC methods using the sfMC method as a reference. The results show that the dfMC method is more accurate and efficient than the pfMC method in heterogeneous medium.

Fast calculation of multipath diffusive reflectance in optical coherence tomography

We show how to efficiently calculate the signal in optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems due to the ballistic photons, the quasi-ballistic photons, and the photons that undergo multiple diffusive scattering using Monte Carlo simulations with importance sampling. This method enables the calculation of these three components of the OCT signal with less than one hundredth of the computational time required by the conventional Monte Carlo method. Therefore, it can be used as a design tool to characterize the performance of OCT systems, and can also be used in the development of novel signal processing techniques that can extend the imaging range of OCT systems. We investigate the parameter dependence of our importance sampling method and we validate it by comparison to an existing method.

Diffuser-aided diffuse optical imaging for breast tumor: a feasibility study based on time-resolved three-dimensional Monte Carlo modeling

This study proposed diffuser-aided diffuse optical imaging (DADOI) as a new approach to improve the performance of the conventional diffuse optical tomography (DOT) approach for breast imaging. The 3-D breast model for Monte Carlo simulation is remodeled from clinical MRI image. The modified Beer-Lambert's law is adopted with the DADOI approach to substitute the complex algorithms of inverse problem for mapping of spatial distribution, and the depth information is obtained based on the time-of-flight estimation. The simulation results demonstrate that the time-resolved Monte Carlo method can be capable of performing source-detector separations analysis. The dynamics of photon migration with various source-detector separations are analyzed for the characterization of breast tissue and estimation of optode arrangement. The source-detector separations should be less than 4 cm for breast imaging in DOT system. Meanwhile, the feasibility of DADOI was manifested in this study. In the results, DADOI approach can provide better imaging contrast and faster imaging than conventional DOT measurement. The DADOI approach possesses great potential to detect the breast tumor in early stage and chemotherapy monitoring that implies a good feasibility for clinical application.

Improved importance sampling for Monte Carlo simulation of time-domain optical coherence tomography

We developed an importance sampling based method that significantly speeds up the calculation of the diffusive reflectance due to ballistic and to quasi-ballistic components of photons scattered in turbid media: Class I diffusive reflectance. These components of scattered photons make up the signal in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. We show that the use of this method reduces the computation time of this diffusive reflectance in time-domain OCT by up to three orders of magnitude when compared with standard Monte Carlo simulation. Our method does not produce a systematic bias in the statistical result that is typically observed in existing methods to speed up Monte Carlo simulations of light transport in tissue. This fast Monte Carlo calculation of the Class I diffusive reflectance can be used as a tool to further study the physical process governing OCT signals, e.g., obtain the statistics of the depth-scan, including the effects of multiple scattering of light, in OCT. This is an important prerequisite to future research to increase penetration depth and to improve image extraction in OCT.

Forced detection Monte Carlo algorithms for accelerated blood vessel image simulations

Two forced detection (FD) variance reduction Monte Carlo algorithms for image simulations of tissue-embedded objects with matched refractive index are presented. The principle of the algorithms is to force a fraction of the photon weight to the detector at each and every scattering event. The fractional weight is given by the probability for the photon to reach the detector without further interactions. Two imaging setups are applied to a tissue model including blood vessels, where the FD algorithms produce identical results as traditional brute force simulations, while being accelerated with two orders of magnitude. Extending the methods to include refraction mismatches is discussed.