Liang-Yu CHEN¹, Min-Cheng PAN^2*, and Min-Chun PAN^1,3

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Central University, Jhongli, Taoyuan 32001, Taiwan, R.O.C.
²Department of Electronic Engineering, Tungnan University, New Taipei City 222, Taiwan, R.O.C.
³Graduate Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Central University, Jhongli, Taoyuan 32001, Taiwan, R.O.C.

(Received August 20, 2012; Revised October 25, 2012; Accepted November 22, 2012)

The purpose of this study is to propose an objective contrast-and-size detail (CSD) analysis for near infrared diffuse optical tomography (NIR DOT), of which the concept is derived from the subjective contrast detail (CD) analysis. We define a measure for numerical CSD analysis based on the resolution estimation of contrast and size. Following that, the contrast-and-size map of resolution can be calculated and displayed for each corresponding image in the map; furthermore, a CSD resolution curve can be plotted by calculating the average value of the projection corresponding to the physical quantity/axis (size or contrast). To provide some worked examples about the proposed CSD analysis evaluating the imaging performance of different reconstruction methods, Tikhonov regularization and edge-preserving regularization with different weighting functions were employed. Results suggested that using edge-preserving regularization with the generalized Lorentzian weighting function is the most attractive for the estimation of absorption-coefficient images.

Key words: contrast-and-size detail analysis, diffuse optical tomography, contrast detail analysis, optical-property image

^*E-mail address: m2pan@mail.tnu.edu.tw