Visualized numerical assessment for near infrared diffuse optical tomography with contrast-and-size detail analysis

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.