Abstract

The technique known as optical tomography involves reconstructing a two- or three-dimensional map of the internal distribution of optical properties of an object from a series of measurements made of the light transmitted between pairs of points on the surface. In this paper we consider the form in which time-resolved measurements should be provided in order to achieve optimum simultaneous reconstruction of scatter and absorption. Various data types are proposed, and an examination is reported of the effect of stochastic noise on their intrinsic uncertainty, and on the ability to uniquely specify the global internal optical properties using pairs of different data types.

© 1998 Optical Society of America