Imaging method for spatial distributions of absorber concentrations

摘要

An imaging method for spatial distributions of concentrations of absorbers distributed in an object provided by the present invention comprises: a radiation step of applying pulsating or continuous lights radiated from predetermined incident positions with predetermined wavelengths to the object comprising a scattering medium containing absorbers; and a detection step of detecting intensities of lights passing through the object at predetermined detection positions. The imaging method further comprises the steps of: assuming an imaginary object having a shape identical with or similar to that of the object and containing no absorbers and, for each of a plurality of pairs of incident and detection positions set on the imaginary object, finding a plurality of photon paths traced by photons starting at the incident position and ending at the detection position; finding averaged photon-path lengths of the photon paths starting at the incident positions and ending at the detection positions in the imaginary object; finding spatial distributions of absorber concentrations from the averaged photon-path lengths, radiated intensities of the radiated lights applied to the object, detected intensities of lights detected at the detection positions and optical constants of the absorbers for the radiated lights applied to the object; and displaying the spatial distributions of the concentrations of the absorbers.