COL 9(10), 101701(2011) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS October 10, 2011
Asymmetric diffusion model for oblique-inc i dence
reflectometr y
Yaqin Chen (
äää
)
1∗
, Liji Cao (
ùùù
ááá
ÄÄÄ
)
2
, and Liqun Sun (
|||
+++
)
1
1
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2
Division of Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center,
Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
∗
Corresponding author: yaqinchen@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
Received March 31, 2011; accepted May 9, 2011; posted on line July 11, 2011
A diffusion theory model induced by a line source distribution is presented for oblique-incidence reflectom-
etry. By fitting to t his asymmetric diffusion model, the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients µ
a
and µ
′
s
of the turbid medium can both be determined with accuracy of 10% from t he absolute profile of
the diffuse reflectance in the incident plane at the negative position –1.5 transp ort mean free path (mfp
′
)
away from the incident point; particularly, µ
′
s
can be estimated from the data at positive positions within
0–1.0 mfp
′
with 10% accuracy. The method is verified by Monte Carlo simulations and experimentally
tested on a phantom.
OCIS codes: 170.0170, 170.3660, 170.7050.
doi: 10.3788/COL201109.101701.
Knowledge about the optical properties, including the
absorption coefficient (µ
a
) and the reduced scattering
coefficient (µ
′
s
= µ
s
(1–g)), where µ
s
is the sc attering
coefficient and g is the anisotropy factor of scattering,
of biological tissues plays an important role for opti-
cal therapeutic and diagnostic techniques in medicine.
Over the past two decades, many techniques have been
developed to measure the optical properties of turbid
media
[1−3]
. Oblique-incidence reflectometry is an attrac-
tive method for determining the optical properties of
semi-infinite turbid media due to its simplicity and
accuracy
[4,5]
. To deduce µ
a
and µ
′
s
from a spatial distri-
bution o f diffuse reflec tance produced by obliquely inci-
dent light, Lin et al.
[5]
proposed a diffusion theory model
by using two isotropic scattering point sources–one pos-
itive source located at 1 transport mean fre e path (1
mfp
′
= 3D = (0.3 5µ
a
+ µ
′
s
)
−1
, w here D is the diffusion
coefficient) measured along the optical path determined
by Snell
′
s law below the surface and one negative image
source above the surface. As a result, the positions of
the point sources had a shift ∆x in the x direction. By
introducing this shift, the dipole-source model in Ref.
[5] can accurately model the oblique-incidence diffuse re-
flectance falling outside the range of 1–2 mfp
′
from the
source. To determine µ
a
and µ
′
s
using model in Ref. [5],
the distance ∆x should be measured by finding the ap-
parent center of the symmetric reflectance profile at posi-
tions several mfp
′
away from the source. Apparently, this
is not good for the construction of a compact oblique-
incidence reflectometer. In this letter, we introduce a
different diffusion model induced by a line source distri-
bution for oblique- incidence reflectometry.
Figure 1 shows a schematic illustration of the geome-
try c oncerned in this letter. An infinitely narrow light
beam is incident upon a planar interface between a semi-
infinite, highly scattering medium and a non-scattering
medium with the r e fr active indices n
t
and n
i
. We set up a
Cartesian coor dinate system Oxyz on the geometry. The
origin O is the point o f entry on the medium surface, the
z axis is the norma l o f the surface pointing toward the
inside of the medium, the x axis is along the projection
of the pencil beam onto the planar surface (z = 0), and
the y axis is per pendicular to both the x and z directions,
pointing outward to form a right-handed Cartesian coor-
dinate system. In such a coordinate system, the incident
beam is located in the x-z plane, oriented at an angle
α
i
(0 6 α
i
< π/2) with respect to the z axis, which
is defined as the angle of incidence. When light enters
the semi-infinite medium, ignoring the scattering inter-
actions, it would be refracted to a transmission ray OL
with an angle α
t
to the z axis, as determined by Snell’s
law. However, light traveling in turbid media will suffer
from multiple scattering events. Only the first scatter-
ing interactions of incident photons are situated along the
unscattered-light tra ns mission path OL. In diffusion ap-
proximation, scattering is assumed to be iso tropic, thus
each first scattering site can be treated as an isotropic
point source. The stre ngth of these sourc e s will be de-
termined by the optical properties of the medium and
will exp onentially decrease with the path length l
0
along
the line OL measured from the incident point, similar
to the exponentially decreasing line source distribution
for normal-incidence beam in Ref. [6]. If assuming the
light beam of unit intensity and taking account the Fres-
nel reflection at the boundary, the source term can be
mathematically expressed as
S(x, y, z; l
0
) = [1 − R
Fres
(α
i
, n
i
, n
t
)] ·
µ
′
s
Z
+∞
0
e
−µ
′
t
l
0
δ(x − l
0
sin α
t
)δ(y)δ(z − l
0
cos α
t
)dl
0
,
(1)
where δ is the Dirac delta function; R
Fres
is the Fresnel
reflection function
[7]
; µ
′
t
= 1/(3D) is the total reduced
attenuation c oefficient, where D has the same definition
as in Ref. [5], 3D = (0.35µ
a
+ µ
′
s
)
−1
.
Extrapolated boundary condition is used to ac c ount
for the effect of Fresnel reflections due to the refractive
1671-7694/2011/101701(5) 101701-1
c
2011 Chinese Optics Letters