Simulation of optical breast density measurements using structured light illumination

Breast density is a risk factor for breast cancer and we propose using diffuse optical tomography with structured light illuminations (SLI) to quantify the percentage of the fibroglandular (dense) tissue within the breast. Segmentations of dense tissue from breast MRI cases were used to create a geometric model of the breast. COMSOL-generated Finite Element Method (FEM) meshes were used for simulating photon migration through the breast tissue and reconstructing the absorption maps. In these preliminary simulations, the absorption coefficients of the non-dense and dense tissue were assigned using literature values based on their concentrations of water, lipid, oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin as they are the main chromophores, or absorbers of light, within the breast. Synthetic SLI measurements were obtained using a FEM-based forward solver. During the simulation, 12 distinct patterns consisting of vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, and checkerboard patterns were used for illumination and detection. Using these simulated measurements, FEM-based inverse solvers were used to reconstruct the 3D absorption maps. In this study, the methods are applied to reconstruct the absorption maps for multiple wavelengths (780nm, 830nm, 900nm, 1000nm) using one case as an example. We are currently continuing these simulations with additional cases and reconstructing 3D concentration maps of the chromophores within the dense and non-dense breast tissue.