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The time-dependent one-dimensional photon transport (radiative transfer) equation is widely used to model light propagation through turbid media with a slab geometry, in a vast number of disciplines. Several numerical and semi-analytical techniques are available to accurately solve this equation. In this work we propose a novel efficient solution technique based on eigen decomposition of the vectorized version of the photon transport equation. Using clever transformations, the four variable integro-differential equation is reduced to a set of first order ordinary differential equations using a combination of a spectral method and the discrete ordinates method. An eigen decomposition approach is then utilized to obtain the closed-form solution of this reduced set of ordinary differential equations.

A novel method for solving the multidimensional transient photon transport equation for laser pulse propagation in biological tissue is presented. A Laguerre expansion is used to represent the time dependency of the incident short pulse. Owing to the intrinsic causal nature of Laguerre functions, our technique automatically always preserve the causality constrains of the transient signal. This expansion of the radiance using a Laguerre basis transforms the transient photon transport equation to the steady state version. The resulting equations are solved using the discrete ordinates method, using a finite volume approach. Therefore, our method enables one to handle general anisotropic, inhomogeneous media using a single formulation but with an added degree of flexibility owing to the ability to invoke higher-order approximations of discrete ordinate quadrature sets. Therefore, compared with existing strategies, this method offers the advantage of representing the intensity with a high accuracy thus minimizing numerical dispersion and false propagation errors. The application of the method to one, two and three dimensional geometries is provided.