Predictions and measurements of scattering and absorption over broad wavelength ranges in tissue phantoms

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