  In optical tomography a physical body is illuminated with near-infrared light
and the resulting outward photon flux is measured at the object boundary. The
goal is to reconstruct internal optical properties of the body, such as
absorption and diffusivity. In this work, it is assumed that the imaged object
is composed of an approximately homogeneous background with clearly
distinguishable embedded inhomogeneities. An algorithm for finding the maximum
a posteriori estimate for the absorption and diffusion coefficients is
introduced assuming an edge-preferring prior and an additive Gaussian
measurement noise model. The method is based on iteratively combining a lagged
diffusivity step and a linearization of the measurement model of diffuse
optical tomography with priorconditioned LSQR. The performance of the
reconstruction technique is tested via three-dimensional numerical experiments
with simulated measurement data.
