PREDICTIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF SCATTERING AND ABSORPTION OVER BROAD WAVELENGTH RANGES IN TISSUE PHANTOMS

Predictions from Mie theory regarding the wavelength dependence of sca ttering in tissue from the near UV to the near IR are discussed and co mpared with experiments on tissue phantoms. For large fiber separation s it is shown that rapid, simultaneous measurements of the elastic sca tter signal for several fiber separations can yield the absorption coe fficient and reduced scattering coefficient. With this information, th e size of the scattering particles can be estimated, and this is done for Intralipid. Measurements made at smaller source detector separatio ns support Mie theory calculations, demonstrating that the sensitivity of elastic scatter measurements to morphological features, such as sc atterer size, is enhanced when the distance between the source and det ector fibers is small. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America