Thermal computed tomography for biological tissue reconstruction based on radiation balance

Abstract

In this paper, a thermal computed tomography (TCT) for structural reconstruction of optical-thin biological tissues is proposed, which is based on a radiation balance between adjacent infinitesimals. A theoretical analysis has been carried out and several influential factors have been analyzed for the reconstructions of a physical model in numerical simulations. The simulation results give a criterion of how to choose an appropriate set of parameters to reconstruct biological tissues with the TCT. Besides, a TCT system was established and a validation experiment was carried out. The studies of both numerical simulations and experiments have verified the feasibility of the proposed TCT and give a valuable reference for the future applications of TCT in biology.