A deep learning model for ultrafast multi-frequency optical property extractions for Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (SFDI)

Spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) is emerging as an important new method in biomedical imaging due to its ability to provide label-free, wide-field tissue optical property maps. Most prior SFDI studies have utilized 2 spatial frequencies (2-fx) for optical property extractions. The use of more than 2 frequencies (multi-fx) can vastly improve the accuracy and reduce uncertainties in optical property estimates for some tissue types, but has been limited in practice due to the slow speed of available inversion algorithms. We present a deep learning solution that eliminates this bottleneck by solving the multi-fx inverse problem 300× – 100,000× faster, with equivalent or improved accuracy compared to competing methods. The proposed deep learning inverse model will help to enable real-time and highly-accurate tissue measurements with SFDI.