Deep learning-based method to accurately estimate breast tissue optical properties in the presence of the chest wall.

Significance In general, image reconstruction methods used in diffuse optical tomography (DOT) are based on diffusion approximation, and they consider the breast tissue as a homogenous, semi-infinite medium. However, the semi-infinite medium assumption used in DOT reconstruction is not valid when the chest wall is underneath the breast tissue. Aim We aim to reduce the chest wall's effect on the estimated average optical properties of breast tissue and obtain accurate forward model for DOT reconstruction. Approach We propose a deep learning-based neural network approach where a convolution neural network (CNN) is trained to simultaneously obtain accurate optical property values for both the breast tissue and the chest wall. Results The CNN model shows great promise in reducing errors in estimating the optical properties of the breast tissue in the presence of a shallow chest wall. For patient data, the CNN model predicted the breast tissue optical absorption coefficient, which was independent of chest wall depth. Conclusions Our proposed method can be readily used in DOT and diffuse spectroscopy measurements to improve the accuracy of estimated tissue optical properties.