Coupled complex adjoint sensitivities for frequency-domain fluorescence tomography: theory and vectorized implementation

We present a computationally efficient and accurate adjoint method for calculating coupled sensitivities of complex frequency-domain excitation and emission fluence to any underlying optical parameters in highly scattering media. The method is shown to be general and accurate. Novel vectorized implementations for finite element global matrix assembly and adjoint sensitivity calculations are shown to speed up calculations by orders of magnitude over traditional loop implementations, thereby making least-squares approaches to fluorescence tomography computationally practical.