In this paper, we used finite element simulation to study the light diffusion in cylinder. The spatial reflectance of different optical methods was discussed in details. The results were in good agreement with that of Monte Carlo simulation. When μ′s/μa≥5, the error was less than 10% and when in the far-source zone, the error was even less than 5%. Besides the light penetration depths obtained from finite element simulation were also very close to the results of Monte Carlo simulation, which was only a little lower due to the diffusion approximation. The error was no more than 7% and decreasing with higher value of μ′s/μa. Moreover, finite element simulation results were more accurate than analytical solution. The error of analytical solution was about 10% in the far-source zone and more than 15% at the near-source zones. The calculation time of the three methods were also compared. For one simulation, it cost about 385 second for finite element simulation, 416 seconds for analytical solution and 8~9 hours for Monte Carlo simulation. The finite element simulation has better accuracy than analytical solution while has much faster calculation speed than Monte Carlo simulation. So it is an effective and promising method to solve light diffusion in cylinder or turbid with curvatures.