Determination of the optical properties of anisotropic biological media using an isotropic diffusion model.

We investigate anisotropic light propagation in biological tissue in steady-state and time domains. Monte Carlo simulations performed for tissue that consists of aligned cylindrical and spherical scatterers show that steady-state and time-resolved reflectance depends strongly on the measurement direction relative to the alignment of the cylinder axis. We examine the determination of optical properties using an isotropic diffusion model and find that in the time domain, in contrast to steady-state spatially resolved reflectance measurements, the obtained absorption coefficient does not depend on the measurement direction and is close to the true value. Contrarily, the derived reduced scattering coefficient depends strongly on the measurement direction in both domains. Measurements of the steady-state and time-resolved reflectance from bovine tendon confirm the theoretical findings. (c) 2007 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers