Effect of the “∇D” Term in Optical Diffusion Imaging

Optical diffusion imaging in highly scattering media such as tissue, as an alternative to X-ray tomography, presents significantly lower health risks, and has successfully demonstrated its potential in biomedical applications. Although current reconstruction algorithms have been applied with some success, there are a number of opportunities for improving both the accuracy of the reconstructions and the speed of convergence. Most studies of frequency-resolved diffusion imaging involve casting the diffusion as a Helmholtz equation, which involves the approximation that ∇D = 0. We describe here an analysis of the effects of this approximation on both the generation of synthetic data for simulations, and the effect on reconstructions.