Investigation of detection limits for diffuse optical tomography systems: I. Theory and experiment.

We present a statistical test using simulated photon migration data and a noise model derived from the hardware of a particular diffuse optical tomography system to predict its detection limits. Our method allows us to assess the spatial distribution of the detection sensitivity of arbitrary geometries and noise without requiring phantom measurements and reconstructions. We determine the minimal detectable lesion size at selected lesion positions and compare the predicted results with phantom measurements carried out in a cup geometry.