Physics Commons^™

Tissue Characterization And Imaging Using Photon Density Waves, Lars O. Svaasand, Bruce J. Tromberg, Richard C. Haskell, Tsong-Tseh Tsay, Michael W. Berns

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

The optical properties of brain tissues have been evaluated by measuring the phase velocity and attenuation of harmonically modulated light. The phase velocity for photon density waves at 650-nm wavelength has been found to be in the range of 5 to 12% of the corresponding velocity in a nonscattering medium, and the optical penetration depth was in the range 2.9 to 5.2 mm. These results are used to predict the resolution of optical imaging of deep tissue structures by diffusely propagating incoherent photons. The results indicate that structures of a few millimeters in linear dimension can be identified at 10 …