Implementation of 3D prostrate ring-scanning mechanism for NIR diffuse optical imaging phantom validation

Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) providing functional information of tissues has drawn great attention for the last two decades. Near infrared (NIR) DOI systems composed of scanning bench, opt-electrical measurement module, system control, and data processing and image reconstruction schemes are developed for the screening and diagnosis of breast tumors. Mostly, the scanning bench belonging to fixed source-and-detector configuration limits computed image resolution to an extent. To cope with the issue, we propose, design and implement a 3D prostrate ring-scanning equipment for NIR DOI with flexible combinations of illumination and detection, and with the function of radial, circular and vertical movement without hard compression of breast tissue like the imaging system using or incorporating with X-ray mammographic bench. Especially, a rotation-sliding-and-moving mechanism was designed for the guidance of source- and detection-channel movement. Following the previous justification for synthesized image reconstruction, in the paper the validation using varied phantoms is further conducted and 3D image reconstruction for their absorption and scattering coefficients is illustrated through the computation of our in-house coded schemes. The source and detection NIR data are acquired to reconstruct the 3D images through the operation of scanning bench in the movement of vertical, radial and circular directions. Rather than the fixed configuration, the addressed screening/diagnosing equipment has the flexibility for optical-channel expansion with a compromise among construction cost, operation time, and spatial resolution of reconstructed μa and μs’ images.