Reciprocity relation for the vector radiative transport equation and its application to diffuse optical tomography with polarized light

TL;DR

This paper derives a reciprocity relation for the vector radiative transport equation, enabling efficient computation of sensitivity kernels in polarized diffuse optical tomography through Monte Carlo simulations, with numerical demonstrations.

Contribution

It introduces a reciprocity relation for vRTE and applies it to improve sensitivity kernel calculations in polarized DOT.

Findings

Derived a reciprocity relation for vRTE

Enabled efficient Monte Carlo computation of sensitivity kernels

Provided numerical examples of polarization-sensitive kernels

Abstract

We derive a reciprocity relation for vector radiative transport equation (vRTE) that describes propagation of polarized light in multiple-scattering media. We then show how this result, together with translational invariance of a plane-parallel sample, can be used to compute efficiently the sensitivity kernel of diffuse optical tomography (DOT) by Monte Carlo simulations. Numerical examples of polarization-selective sensitivity kernels thus computed are given.