Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) providing functional information of tissues has drawn great attention for the last two decades [1]. Near infrared (NIR) DOI systems composed of scanning equipment, opt-electrical measuring module, system control, and data processing and image reconstruction schemes are developed for the screening and diagnosis of breast tumors. Mostly, the scanning equipment belonging to fixed source-and-detector configuration limits computed image resolution to an extent [2–4].
To cope with the issue, a flexible ring-scanning mechanism design has been investigated and analyzed in order to obtain the most probable effectiveness and efficiency while retaining acceptable scanning time. Before the detail design of ring-scanning equipment was conducted, finite-element-based image reconstruction schemes were performed to obtain tomographical images through changing source-and-detection arrangement of the ring-scanning mechanism. From the simulation [5], the 2Z3S or 3Z3S configuration was found an apparently better design for the ring-scanning mechanism in...
