Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”

The Monte Carlo (MC) method is a popular approach to modeling photon propagation inside general turbid media, such as human tissue. Progress had been made in the past year with the independent proposals of two mesh-based Monte Carlo methods employing ray-tracing techniques. Both methods have shown i...

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Autor principal: Fang, Qianqian
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Optical Society of America 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3087581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21559136
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/BOE.2.001258
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author Fang, Qianqian
author_facet Fang, Qianqian
author_sort Fang, Qianqian
collection PubMed
description The Monte Carlo (MC) method is a popular approach to modeling photon propagation inside general turbid media, such as human tissue. Progress had been made in the past year with the independent proposals of two mesh-based Monte Carlo methods employing ray-tracing techniques. Both methods have shown improvements in accuracy and efficiency in modeling complex domains. A recent paper by Shen and Wang [Biomed. Opt. Express 2, 44 (2011)] reported preliminary results towards the cross-validation of the two mesh-based MC algorithms and software implementations, showing a 3–6 fold speed difference between the two software packages. In this comment, we share our views on unbiased software comparisons and discuss additional issues such as the use of pre-computed data, interpolation strategies, impact of compiler settings, use of Russian roulette, memory cost and potential pitfalls in measuring algorithm performance. Despite key differences between the two algorithms in handling of non-tetrahedral meshes, we found that they share similar structure and performance for tetrahedral meshes. A significant fraction of the observed speed differences in the mentioned article was the result of inconsistent use of compilers and libraries.
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spelling pubmed-30875812011-05-10 Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation” Fang, Qianqian Biomed Opt Express Optics of Tissue and Turbid Media The Monte Carlo (MC) method is a popular approach to modeling photon propagation inside general turbid media, such as human tissue. Progress had been made in the past year with the independent proposals of two mesh-based Monte Carlo methods employing ray-tracing techniques. Both methods have shown improvements in accuracy and efficiency in modeling complex domains. A recent paper by Shen and Wang [Biomed. Opt. Express 2, 44 (2011)] reported preliminary results towards the cross-validation of the two mesh-based MC algorithms and software implementations, showing a 3–6 fold speed difference between the two software packages. In this comment, we share our views on unbiased software comparisons and discuss additional issues such as the use of pre-computed data, interpolation strategies, impact of compiler settings, use of Russian roulette, memory cost and potential pitfalls in measuring algorithm performance. Despite key differences between the two algorithms in handling of non-tetrahedral meshes, we found that they share similar structure and performance for tetrahedral meshes. A significant fraction of the observed speed differences in the mentioned article was the result of inconsistent use of compilers and libraries. Optical Society of America 2011-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3087581/ /pubmed/21559136 http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/BOE.2.001258 Text en ©2011 Optical Society of America http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which permits download and redistribution, provided that the original work is properly cited. This license restricts the article from being modified or used commercially.
spellingShingle Optics of Tissue and Turbid Media
Fang, Qianqian
Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title_full Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title_fullStr Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title_full_unstemmed Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title_short Comment on “A study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous Monte-Carlo optical simulation”
title_sort comment on “a study on tetrahedron-based inhomogeneous monte-carlo optical simulation”
topic Optics of Tissue and Turbid Media
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3087581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21559136
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/BOE.2.001258
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