IMAGING OF HIGHLY TURBID MEDIA BY THE ABSORPTION METHOD

The results of a study on imaging that is based on the absorption meth od are presented. This method is based on attenuation measurements car ried out in the presence of a sufficiently high absorption coefficient by the use of a continuous-wave source. The benefit of absorption on image quality comes from the strong attenuation of photons traveling a long long trajectories. When the absorption coefficient is increased, the received energy decreases, but the mean path length of received ph otons decreases. The effect of increasing the absorption coefficient i s similar to that of decreasing the gating time when the time-gating t echnique is used. Experimental results showed that the spatial resolut ion obtained with the absorption technique is similar to that obtained with the time-gating technique. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America