Study on the propagation of ultra-short pulse light in cylindrical optical phantoms

• Published in: Physics in medicine & biology Vol. 44; no. 11; pp. 2747 - 2763
• Main Authors: Sassaroli, A, Martelli, F, Imai, D, Yamada, Y
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.11.1999; Institute of Physics
• Subjects: Algorithms; Exact sciences and technology; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); Humans; Light; Monte Carlo Method; Optics; Optics and Photonics; Phantoms, Imaging; Physics; Scattering, Radiation; Tomography; Wave optics; Wave propagation, transmission and absorption; Experimental study; Cylindrical shape; Finite element method; Monte Carlo methods; Time domain method; Wave propagation; Light; Optical properties; Analytical method; Diffusion equation; Comparative study; Biomedical engineering; Test object
• ISSN: 0031-9155; 1361-6560
• DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/44/11/305

A detailed study about ultra-short pulse light propagation inside cylindrical scattering and absorbing phantoms is presented. Some comparisons between a Monte Carlo code and the analytical solution of diffusion equation for a delta(t) source and point-like detectors placed at different angles of detection are shown. To better quantify the agreement between the temporal profiles obtained from the two different methods of calculation, a fitting procedure based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm has been implemented. Some examples on the retrieval of the optical properties for both the Monte Carlo and experimental data are presented. In the case of inhomogeneous cylindrical phantoms, some comparisons between the results of the time-domain 3D model of finite element method and 3D Monte Carlo are also shown.