SYSTEMS, METHODS, AND DEVICES FOR IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION USING COMBINED PDE-CONSTRAINED AND SIMPLIFIED SPHERICAL HARMONICS ALGORITHM

Systems, methods, and devices for image reconstruction using combined PDE-constrained and simplified spherical harmonics (SPN) algorithm are presented herein. SPN equations can be used as the forward model in diffuse optical tomography (DOT) and employed in a PDE-constrained reduced space sequential quadratic programming (rSQP) optimization method to reconstruct spatially distributed optical properties, such as absorption, scattering, fat, oxygenated hemoglobin, de-oxygenated hemoglobin, fluorescent concentration, quantum yield, etc. The SPN algorithm with the PDE-constrained rSQP optimization method allows for DOT imaging that uses significantly less computational resources (e.g., time and random-access memory (RAM)) than methods employing the equation of radiative transfer (ERT). The techniques disclosed herein allow for more expeditious image processing as well as the potential for clinical diagnosis using DOT imaging. Diagnosis can be performed by a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system, which can provide clinically relevant analysis and interaction shortly after patient imaging.