Hideki FUNAMIZU¹, Takaaki MAEDA², Shoko SASAKI¹, Izumi NISHIDATE³, and Yoshihisa AIZU¹

¹Division of Mechanical Systems and Materials Engineering, Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran, Hokkaido 050-8585, Japan
²Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kushiro National College of Technology, Kushiro, Hokkaido 084-0916, Japan
³Graduate School of Bio-applications & Science Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan

(Received October 7, 2013; Accepted January 8, 2014)

We study a simulation of spectral reflectance in human skin tissue using ray-tracing software and the Monte Carlo method on the basis of a graphics processing unit (GPU). An analysis of light propagation using ray-tracing software has several advantages in that it can readily reproduce the complex structure of skin tissue, such as grooves of the skin surface or the boundaries of skin tissue layers, and perform optical simulation with optical elements close to those in a real experiment using only the ray-tracing software. Meanwhile, it has a serious disadvantage in that the simulation time is extremely long because the algorithm is CPU-based. To overcome this disadvantage, we propose a simulation method using the ray-tracing software and a GPU-based Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The results of the simulation are shown and discussed.

Key words: Monte Carlo simulation, ray tracing, skin tissue, spectral reflectance