Bioluminescence of luciferase-expressing cells in live animals is a promising technique for image guided tumor resection. However, requiring exact optical tissue parameters is an underlying problem of diffusion equation when recovering bioluminescent images of luciferase activity within a volume using emission optical signal data from internal light sources. In this paper, an equivalence method based on the equation of radiative transfer (ERT) is proposed to locate bioluminescence source without optical tissue parameters. The solution of equivalence method is satisfied with the unique of localization as well as the complex tissue environment. The reconstructed images of bioluminescence are presented with simulated heterogeneous tissue models, and an 8.7% relative error of the source localization is obtained.