Study on the propagation of ultra-short pulse light in cylindrical opticalphantoms

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.