Modeling photon propagation in biological tissues using a generalized Delta-Eddington phase function

Abstract

Photon propagation in biological tissue is commonly described by the radiative transfer equation, while the phase function in the equation represents the scattering characteristics of the medium and has significant influence on the precision of solution and the efficiency of computation. In this work, we present a generalized Delta-Eddington phase function to simplify the radiative transfer equation to an integral equation with respect to photon fluence rate. Comparing to the popular diffusion approximation model, the solution of the integral equation is highly accurate to model photon propagation in the biological tissue over a broad range of optical parameters. This methodology is validated by Monte Carlo simulation.