Modeling diffuse reflectance from homogeneous semi-infinite turbid media for biological tissue applications: a Monte Carlo study

Biomed Opt Express. 2011 Dec 1;2(12):3284-94. doi: 10.1364/BOE.2.003284. Epub 2011 Nov 9.

Abstract

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is one of the simplest and widely used techniques for the non-invasive study of biological tissues but no exact analytical solution exists for the problem of diffuse reflectance from turbid media such as biological tissues. In this work, a general treatment of the problem of diffuse reflectance from a homogeneous semi-infinite turbid medium is presented using Monte Carlo simulations. Based on the results of the Monte Carlo method, simple semi-empirical analytical solutions are developed valid for a wide range of collection geometries corresponding to various optical detector diameters. This approach may be useful for the quick and accurate modeling of diffuse reflectance from tissues.

Keywords: (170.3660) Light propagation in tissues; (170.6510) Spectroscopy, tissue diagnostics; (170.7050) Turbid media.