Photon transport parameters of diffusive media with highly anisotropic scattering

The dependence of the photon transport parameters on the optical characteristics of diffusive media such as biological tissue with strongly forward biased scattering is examined with respect to the influence of the large angle scattering component and higher moments of the phase function. The latter are particularly significant for the temporal evolution of the angular intensity. The P3 approximation gives clear physical insight into the influence of boundaries on the radiative flux and is applied here as an analytic method of evaluating certain phase functions reported in the literature, while higher order P(N) approximations are used to calculate accurate time-dependent angular intensity distributions of the scattered light.