Abstract

We present a method based on spatially resolved fluorescence measurement for the simultaneous estimation of optical transport parameters, namely, the reduced scattering coefficient $({\mu }_s\prime )$, the absorption coefficient $\left({\mu }_a\right)$, and the intrinsic fluorescence spectra from turbid media. The accuracy of this approach was tested by conducting studies on a series of tissue-simulating phantoms with known optical transport properties. The estimated relative error in the values for ${\mu }_s\prime$ and ${\mu }_a$ using this technique was found to be $\le 10\%$. Furthermore, the line shape and intensity of the intrinsic fluorescence recovered by using this approach were observed to be free from the distorting effects of the wavelength-dependent absorption and scattering properties of the medium, and they were in excellent agreement with the directly measured intrinsic fluorescence spectra of the fluorophores.

© 2006 Optical Society of America