Abstract
Optical methods of biomedical tomographic imaging are of considerable interest due to their non-invasive nature and sensitivity to physiologically important markers. Similarly to other imaging modalities, optical methods can be enhanced by utilizing extrinsic contrast agents. Typically, these are fluorescent molecules, which can aggregate in regions of interest due to various mechanisms. In the current approaches to imaging, the intrinsic (related to the tissue) and extrinsic (related to the contrast agent) optical parameters are determined separately. This can result in errors, in particular, due to using simplified heuristic models for the spectral dependence of the optical parameters. Recently, we have developed the theory of non-reciprocal broken-ray tomography (NRBRT) for fluorescence imaging of weakly scattering systems. NRBRT enables simultaneous reconstruction of the fluorophore concentration as well as of the intrinsic optical attenuation coefficient at both the excitation and the emission wavelengths. Importantly, no assumption about the spectral dependence of the tissue optical properties is made in NRBRT. In this study, we perform numerical validation of NRBRT under realistic conditions using the Monte Carlo method to generate forward data. We demonstrate that NRBRT can be used for tomographic imaging of samples of up to four scattering lengths in size. The effects of physical characteristics of the detectors such as the area and the acceptance angle are also investigated.