A detailed study about ultra-short pulse light propagation inside cylindric
al scattering and absorbing phantoms is presented. Some comparisons between
a Monte Carlo code and the analytical solution of diffusion equation for a
delta(t) source and point-like detectors placed at different angles of det
ection are shown. To better quantify the agreement between the temporal pro
files obtained from the two different methods of calculation, a fitting pro
cedure based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm has been implemented. Som
e examples on the retrieval of the optical properties for both the Monte Ca
rlo and experimental data are presented. In the case of inhomogeneous cylin
drical phantoms, some comparisons between the results of the time-domain 3D
model of finite element method and 3D Monte Carlo are also shown.