Statistical characteristics of photon distributions in a semi-infinite turbid medium: Analytical expressions and their application to optical tomography

Abstract The paper focuses on the determination of statistical characteristics of photon distributions in a semi-infinite turbid medium, specifically the photon average trajectory and the root-mean-square deviation of photons from the average trajectory, with an approach based on the diffusion approximation to the radiative transfer equation. We show that the Dirichlet and Robin boundary conditions used for this purpose give close results. We derive exact analytical expressions for the case of the Dirichlet boundary condition. To demonstrate the practical value of our results we consider approximate solution of the inverse problem of time-domain diffuse optical tomography with the flat layer transmission geometry. The problem is solved with the method of photon average trajectories which are constructed with analytical expressions derived for a semi-infinite medium.