Frequency-domain (FD) optical tomography instruments modulate the intensity of the light source at a radio frequency and measure the amplitude and phase shift of the detected photon density wave. The differing spatial sensitivities of amplitude and phase to the optical properties of tissue suggest that inclusion of phase data can improve the image reconstruction accuracy. This study describes our methodology for improved use of FD data in conjunction with a Monte Carlo (MC) forward solver (Monte Carlo eXtreme; MCX) and a voxel-based model of a two-year-old child’s head. The child participated our previous study where subjects were stimulated with affective (slow brushing) and non-affective touch (fast brushing) to their right forearm, and the responses were measured from the left hemisphere with our in-house 16-channel high-density FD system. We implemented the computation of the FD sensitivity profiles to the MCX photon simulation software, and validated the output against our in-house MC code. We used simulated and the real experimental touch response data to observe the effects of including both FD data types to the image reconstruction instead of amplitude data alone. For the simulated and experimental case, we observed that the inclusion of phase data increases the reconstructed contrast in the brain. The individual touch responses showed similarity to the group-level results in our original publication with 16 subjects and amplitude data alone, and other literature.
Importance of anatomical background model in reconstructing absorptive perturbations at different depths in the neonatal head was assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. Results suggest that prior information of the optical background can improve reconstructions, even when optical parameters are only approximately known.
KEYWORDS: Data modeling, Tissue optics, Absorption, Magnetic resonance imaging, Monte Carlo methods, Optical properties, Photons, Brain, Head, Finite element methods
We have developed a perturbation Monte Carlo method for calculating forward and inverse solutions to the
optical tomography imaging problem in the presence of anatomical a priori information. The method uses
frequency domain data. In the present work, we consider the problem of imaging hemodynamic changes due
to brain activation in the infant brain. We test finite element method and Monte Carlo based implementations
using a homogeneous model with the exterior of the domain warped to match digitized points on the skin.
With the perturbation Monte Carlo model, we also test a heterogeneous model based on anatomical a priori
information derived from a previously recorded infant T1 magnetic resonance (MR) image. Our simulations
show that the anatomical information improves the accuracy of reconstructions quite significantly even if the
anatomical MR images are based on another infant. This suggests that significant benefits can be obtained
by the use of generic infant brain atlas information in near-infrared spectroscopy and optical tomography studies.
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