Photon-cell interactive Monte Carlo model based on the geometric optics theory for photon migration in blood by incorporating both extra- and intracellular pathways.

A photon-cell interactive Monte Carlo (pciMC) that tracks photon migration in both the extra- and intracellular spaces is developed without using macroscopic scattering phase functions and anisotropy factors, as required for the conventional Monte Carlos (MCs). The interaction of photons at the plasma-cell boundary of randomly oriented 3-D biconcave red blood cells (RBCs) is modeled using the geometric optics. The pciMC incorporates different photon velocities from the extra- to intracellular space, whereas the conventional MC treats RBCs as points in the space with a constant velocity. In comparison to the experiments, the pciMC yielded the mean errors in photon migration time of 9.8±6.8 and 11.2±8.5% for suspensions of small and large RBCs (RBC(small), RBC(large)) averaged over the optically diffusing region from 2000 to 4000 μm, while the conventional random walk Monte Carlo simulation gave statistically higher mean errors of 19.0±5.8 ( p < 0.047) and 21.7±19.1% (p < 0.055), respectively. The gradients of optical density in the diffusing region yielded statistically insignificant differences between the pciMC and experiments with the mean errors between them being 1.4 and 0.9% in RBC(small) and RBC(larger), respectively. The pciMC based on the geometric optics can be used to accurately predict photon migration in the optically diffusing, turbid medium.