title: Voxel-based, parallel simulation of light in skin tissue for the reconstruction of subsurface skin lesion volumes.
abstract: Early detection and diagnosis of skin cancer is essential to treating the malignancy and preventing death. Subsurface features and depth information are critical in evaluating a skin lesion for this early malignancy screening. We present a novel voxel-based Monte Carlo simulation of light propagation in skin tissue which runs in a highly parallel environment on desktop graphics processors, resulting in an extremely fast simulation of millions of photons in less than one second. We then use this model in a genetic algorithm for the inverse 3D volume reconstruction of a skin lesion, given a set of multispectral images obtained using non-invasive transillumination imaging. Our method demonstrates improved accuracy at a superior resolution to existing methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. bmd5@njit.edu
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: D'Alessandro
authors.forename: Atam P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Dhawan
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008543:Melanins / Q000378:metabolism; D008954:Models, Biological; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D012867:Skin / Q000528:radiation effects*; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D014172:Transillumination / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D008543:Melanins