Investigation of the light propagation in the human forearm

Abstract

In the present study it is investigated the applicability of spectrally resolved reflectance at a certain distance from the incident beam to determine the optical coefficients of multi-layered tissues. The main motivation of this investigation is to achieve the simplest multi-layered model as possible which describes, within a given tolerance range, the light propagation in human forearm and its optical properties. For getting to this end it is investigated which assumptions within the model are acceptable. We found out that the thickness of the first layer in a two-layered model is a parameter suitable to be fixed, as it does not have a large negative influence on the fitting-results, and that it is expected to obtain better results with an absolute fit than with a relative one. Furthermore, this investigation was complemented with experimental spectrally resolved reflectance measurements performed on tissue-simulating phantoms of known optical properties and on human forearms by using optical fibers at different distances to deliver and detect reflected light by means of a CCD camera.