Ultrafast optical property map generation using lookup tables

Imaging technologies working in the spatial frequency domain are becoming increasingly popular for generating wide-field maps of optical properties, enabling rapid analysis of tissue parameters. While acquisition methods have become faster and are now performing in real-time, processing methods remain slow, precluding real-time display of information. We present solutions that rapidly solve the inverse problem for extracting optical properties by use of advanced lookup tables (LUTs). We present methods and results based on a dense, linearly sampled lookup table and an analytical representation that generate maps of absorption and reduced scattering in similar to 10 ms, which is 100x faster than the standard method, with <= 4% error compared to the Monte-Carlo simulation. Combined with real-time acquisition methods, the proposed techniques enable video-rate feedback of real-time property maps, enabling full video-rate guidance in the clinic. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).