A SOLID TISSUE PHANTOM FOR PHOTON MIGRATION STUDIES

A solid tissue phantom made of agar, Intralipid and black ink is descr ibed and characterized. The preparation procedure is fast and easily i mplemented with standard laboratory equipment. An instrumentation for time-resolved transmittance measurements was used to determine the opt ical properties of the phantom. The absorption and the reduced scatter ing coefficients are linear with the ink and Intralipid concentrations , respectively. A systematic decrease of the reduced scattering coeffi cient dependent on the agar content is observed, but can easily be man aged. The phantom is highly homogeneous and shows good repeatability a mong different preparations. Moreover, agar inclusions can be easily e mbedded in either solid or liquid matrixes, and no artefacts are cause d by the solid-solid or solid-liquid interfaces. This allows one to pr oduce reliable and realistic inhomogeneous phantoms with known optical properties, particularly interesting for studies on optical imaging t hrough turbid media.