Abstract

Time-resolved transmittance measurements were performed in the wavelength range of 610 or 700 to 1050 nm on phantom slabs and bone tissue cubes of different sizes. The data were best fitted with solutions of the diffusion equation for an infinite slab and for a parallelepiped to investigate how size and optical properties of the samples affect the results obtained with the two models. When small samples are considered, the slab model overestimates both optical coefficients, especially the absorption. The parallelepiped model largely compensates for the small sample size and performs much better also when the absorption spectra are interpreted with the Beer’s law to estimate bone tissue composition.

© 2007 SPIE