Dynamically adaptive mesh refinement technique for image reconstruction in optical tomography.

A novel adaptive mesh technique is introduced for problems of image reconstruction in luminescence optical tomography. A dynamical adaptation of the three-dimensional scheme based on the finite-volume formulation reduces computational time and balances the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem. The arbitrary shape of the bounding surface is handled by an additional refinement of computational cells on the boundary. Dynamical shrinking of the search volume is introduced to improve computational performance and accuracy while locating the luminescence target. Light propagation in the medium is modeled by the telegraph equation, and the image-reconstruction algorithm is derived from the Fredholm integral equation of the first kind. Stability and computational efficiency of the introduced method are demonstrated for image reconstruction of one and two spherical luminescent objects embedded within a breastlike tissue phantom. Experimental measurements are simulated by the solution of the forward problem on a grid of 5x5 light guides attached to the surface of the phantom.