Optical property characterization based on a phase function approximation model

Recently, we generalized the Delta-Eddington phase function and applied it to the radiative transfer equation for modeling the photon propagation in biological tissue. The resultant phase approximation model was shown to be highly accurate with a wide range of optical properties, including the strongly absorbing and weakly scattering media. In this paper, we propose phase-approximation-based method for estimating the optical parameters. Specifically, we design an iterative algorithm to take advantage of both the global search ability of the differential evolution algorithm and the efficiency of the conjugate gradient method. Then, we demonstrate the feasibility and merits of the proposed method in both numerical simulation and phantom experiments.