I am doing a PhD thesis titled “Utilising the radiative transfer equation in optical tomography”. Diffuse optical tomography uses visible or near-infrared light to interrogate the internal properties of biological tissues. The technique has potential for providing functional and structural information of biological targets with applications for example in imaging breast cancer, monitoring treatments, functional brain studies, monitoring infant brain oxygenation level, and small animal studies.
Image reconstruction problem in diffuse optical tomography is a highly ill-posed inverse problem. Ill-posedness means that even small errors in modelling or measurements can lead to large errors in reconstructions. In my thesis, I develop numerical methods for the radiative transfer equation to be applied in diffuse optical tomography.
