Abstract Xiaoyan Ma STUDY OF OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF SKIN TISSUES FROM

Accurate knowledge of optical properties of skin tissues is fundamental to the study of tissue optics and development of optical instrumentation in clinics. The goal of research described in this dissertation is to develop a system of experimental methods and theoretical models for the inverse determination of optical parameters of mammalian tissues and various tissue phantoms. Based on the integrating sphere and spatial filtering techniques, various experimental systems have been constructed and improved to measure the diffuse reflectance, the diffuse transmittance, and the collimated transmission of turbid samples from the spectral region of ultraviolet to short-wave infrared. Different Monte Carlo based algorithms have been developed to simulate photons transportation under different experimental configurations based on the radiation transfer theory. And the corresponding procedures for inverse determination of optical parameters from the experimental data have been established. We have determined the complex refractive index of polystyrene microspheres as a function of wavelength from 370 nm to 1610nm using a Monte Carlo model in combination with the Mie phase function. The optical parameters of porcine skin dermi