Numerical reconstruction of turbid slab optical properties using global optimization algorithms

The detection and reconstruction of the optical properties within turbid slabs/plate parallel mediums have been widely investigated for its applications in medical diagnosis, atmosphere detection, etc., where the scattering of light would be expected. Although the scattering signal can be utilized for diagnostics purposes, the multiple scattering in the intermediate scattering regime (with an optical depth ~ 2–9) has posed a remarkable challenge. Existing optical tomography methods usually only reconstruct the reduced scattering coefficient to investigate the properties of the scattering target, while reconstruction efforts in analyzing the exact scattering phase function are rare. Solving such issues can provide much more information for proper interpretation of the characteristics of the turbid slab. This work demonstrates an inversion method based on optimization algorithms and the angular distribution of the transmitted light at the entrance plane and the exit plane of the sought medium. Candidate phase functions were pre-calculated and the optimization algorithm is able to reconstruct the phase function spatial distribution of the turbid slab with a satisfactory computational cost. Parametric studies were also performed to analyze the performance of each optimization algorithm used and the sensitivity of this Markov reconstruction scheme to noise.