Design and implementation of an optical simulation environment for bioluminescent tomography studies

As a challenging task for bioluminescent tomography simulation, a virtual optical environment is needed to solve the forward problem accurately, that is, to achieve a high precision for bioluminescent signal synthesis on the external body surface of a small animal. The molecular optical simulation environment named MOSE is implemented using the C++ programming language and the OpenGL techniques, including a user-friendly interface with interactive tools facilitating users' operations. The accuracy of the virtual optical environment is verified by error analysis of mesh simplification and comparison between MOSE results and experimental data. This virtual optical environment is accurate, flexible and efficient to simulate the photon propagation in complicated tissues, which has a great potential to become a software platform for bioluminescent tomography studies and other molecular imaging applications.