Hybrid radiosity-SP3 equation based bioluminescence tomography reconstruction for turbid medium with low- and non-scattering regions

To provide an ideal solution for a specific problem of gastric cancer detection in which low-scattering regions simultaneously existed with both the non- and high-scattering regions, a novel hybrid radiosity-SP3 equation based reconstruction algorithm for bioluminescence tomography was proposed in this paper. In the algorithm, the third-order simplified spherical harmonics approximation (SP3) was combined with the radiosity equation to describe the bioluminescent light propagation in tissues, which provided acceptable accuracy for the turbid medium with both low- and non-scattering regions. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated with digital mouse based simulations and a gastric cancer-bearing mouse based in situ experiment. Primary results demonstrated the feasibility and superiority of the proposed algorithm for the turbid medium with low- and non-scattering regions. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.