G. Zaccanti et al., Method for measuring the mean time of flight spent by photons inside a volume element of a highly diffusing medium, OPTICS LETT, 24(18), 1999, pp. 1290-1292
A method of measuring the mean time of flight, [ti], spent by photons insid
e a generic volume element of a highly diffusing medium is presented. The m
ethod comes from a general property of the radiative transfer equation and
is based on relative measurements of cw attenuation that correspond to smal
l variations of the absorption coefficient inside the volume element. By us
e of a liquid phantom and small gels with known optical properties it was p
ossible to measure [ti] with good accuracy, even when it was only a few pic
oseconds long. The results were in good agreement with Monte Carlo results.
(C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 170.5280, 170.7050, 170.3
660.