Accelerated modeling of light transport in heterogeneous tissues using superposition of virtual sources

We present a perturbation theory for diffusive light transport in turbid media, which allows us to model the light distribution around inhomogeneities of complex geometries. The diffusion equation for an inhomogeneous medium is transformed into an equivalent integral equation that can be solved with a fast iterative numerical algorithm. This method models three dimensional geometries considerably faster than standard methods. Furthermore, the integral formulation supports an intuitive understanding of the physical processes.