The diffusion approximation of the radiative transport equation is the most widely used model in current researches on fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT), which is limited in some low or zero scattering regions. Recently, the simplified spherical harmonics equations (SP_N) model has attracted much attention in modeling the light propagation in small tissue geometries at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. In this paper, we report an efficient numerical method for FMT that combines the advantage of SP_N model and hp-FEM. For comparison purposes, hp-FEM and h-FEM are respectively applied in the reconstruction process with diffusion model and SPN model. Simulation experiments on a 3D digital mouse atlas are designed to evaluate the reconstruction methods in terms of the location and the reconstructed fluorescent yield. The experimental results demonstrate that hp-FEM with SPN model, yield more accurate results than h-FEM with DA model does. And the reconstructed results show the potential and feasibility of the proposed approach.

Date Published: 30 August 2013
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 8910, International Symposium on Photoelectronic Detection and Imaging 2013: Imaging Spectrometer Technologies and Applications, 891018 (30 August 2013);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8910:
International Symposium on Photoelectronic Detection and Imaging 2013: Imaging Spectrometer Technologies and Applications
Lifu Zhang; Jianfeng Yang, Editor(s)