Image and Optical Property Reconstruction From Noninvasive Measurements of Turbid Media, in Vitro and in Vivo: A Promising Method for Optical Mammography

Before my work in this field, researchers were uncertain whether the diffusion model would be valid for a medium containing inhomogeneities. I, along with a handful of other researchers demonstrated that the diffusion model is accurate enough to include well behaved heterogeneous tissue models in which a number of macroscopic objects of different size and shape are embedded in a homogeneous background medium. I have employed a fitting of the experimental data to the diffusion model to accurately reconstruct not only the position and size, but also the optical properties including the relative index of refraction, absorption and scattering coefficients of objects immersed in highly scattering media. In this thesis I describe a model for locating and characterizing optical inhomogeneities in a turbid medium. I will go on to discuss limits of the technique and present data collected in vivo from a 55 year old female subject with a malignant breast cancer that was detected and optically characterized by these techniques.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Walker, Scott Andrew

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gratton, Enrico

• Engineering, Biomedical

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9921750

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/80668