Local time in diffusive media and applications to imaging.

Local time is the measure of how much time a random walk has visited a given position. In multiple scattering media, where waves are diffuse, local time measures the sensitivity of the waves to the local medium's properties. Local variations of absorption, velocity, and scattering between two measurements yield variations in the wave field. These variations are proportional to the local time of the volume where the change happened and the amplitude of variation. The wave field variations are measured using correlations and can be used as input in a inversion algorithm to produce variation maps. The present article gives the expression of the local time in dimensions one, two, and three and an expression of its fluctuations, in order to perform such inversions and estimate their accuracy.