Abstract

Diffusely scattered light models have been extensively used by research groups on their effort to predict laser light's propagation through biologic tissue.^1-3 This has provided useful results in the case of homogeneous isotropic materials. Biologic tissue is a highly complex medium consisting of single cells and various scattering and absorbing multicellular structures. The effect of light diffraction should not be ignored when the size and shape of hidden objects in the tissue is predicted via laser transmission measurements. Laser diffractometry has been suggested in the past as a method of measuring cellular dimension changes due to fluid shear⁴ (erythrocyte deform- ability). This technique though has been used only in transparent media where absorption and scattering is reduced and the contrast of the cells is high.

© 1996 Optical Society of America