Simulations and phantom measurements are used to evaluate the ability of time-domain diffuse optical tomography using Mellin-Laplace transforms to quantify the absorption perturbation of centimetric objects immersed at depth 1-2 cm in turbid media. We find that the estimated absorption coefficient varies almost linearly with the absorption change in the range of 0-0.15 cm-1 but is underestimated by a factor that depends on the inclusion depth (~2, 3 and 6 for depths of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 cm respectively). For larger absorption changes, the variation is sublinear with ~20% decrease for δμa = 0.37 cm-1. By contrast, constraining the absorption change to the actual volume of the inclusion may considerably improve the accuracy and linearity of the reconstructed absorption.
Keywords: (030.5260) Photon counting; (100.3010) Image reconstruction techniques; (110.0113) Imaging through turbid media; (110.6960) Tomography; (170.6920) Time-resolved imaging; (230.5160) Photodetectors.