An Improved Computing Method for Analysing the Spatial Resolved Reflectance from Biological Tissues

A mathematical expression of reflectance point-spread-function, which is defined as the spatial distribution of light diffuse-reflected from bio-tissues irradiated by an infinitely narrow photon beam, is derived from the diffusion approximation (DA) theory. With the introduction of reflectance point-spread-function to describe the reflectance characteristics of bio-tissues, the convolution method is used to calculate the spatial resolved reflectance from dense and thick tissues irradiated by different photon beams. This is called the DA based convolution method and is used to calculate the responses of the semi-infinite bio-tissues irradiated by a Gaussian beam and a flat beam with different beam radius. The calculation results show that the DA based convolution method has much higher computing efficiency compared to the Monte Carlo method.