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20 February 2019 Dual-grid mesh-based Monte Carlo algorithm for efficient photon transport simulations in complex three-dimensional media
Shijie Yan, Anh Phong Tran, Qianqian Fang
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Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 24, Issue 2, 020503 (February 2019). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.24.2.020503
Abstract
The mesh-based Monte Carlo (MMC) method is an efficient algorithm to model light propagation inside tissues with complex boundaries, but choosing appropriate mesh density can be challenging. A fine mesh improves the spatial resolution of the output but requires more computation. We propose an improved MMC—dual-grid mesh-based Monte Carlo (DMMC)—to accelerate photon simulations using a coarsely tessellated tetrahedral mesh for ray-tracing computation and an independent voxelated grid for output data storage. The decoupling between ray-tracing and data storage grids allows us to simultaneously achieve faster simulations and improved output spatial accuracy. Furthermore, we developed an optimized ray-tracing technique to eliminate unnecessary ray–tetrahedron intersection tests in optically thick mesh elements. We validate the proposed algorithms using a complex heterogeneous domain and compare the solutions with those from MMC and voxel-based Monte Carlo. We found that DMMC with an unrefined constrained Delaunay tessellation of the boundary nodes yielded the highest speedup, ranging from 1.3  ×   to 2.9  ×   for various scattering settings, with nearly no loss in accuracy. In addition, the optimized ray-tracing technique offers excellent acceleration in high-scattering media, reducing the ray–tetrahedron test count by over 100-fold. Our DMMC software can be downloaded at http://mcx.space/mmc.
CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
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Shijie Yan, Anh Phong Tran, and Qianqian Fang "Dual-grid mesh-based Monte Carlo algorithm for efficient photon transport simulations in complex three-dimensional media," Journal of Biomedical Optics 24(2), 020503 (20 February 2019). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.24.2.020503
Received: 12 August 2018; Accepted: 22 January 2019; Published: 20 February 2019
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Cited by 32 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Monte Carlo methods
Scattering
Tissues
Computer simulations
Photon transport
Chemical elements
Data storage
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