Differential optical spectroscopy for absorption characterization of scattering media

Reflectance techniques are commonly used to characterize the optical properties of tissues. However, the precise determination of local chromophore concentrations in turbid media is usually difficult because of the nonlinear dependence of light intensity as a function of scattering and absorption coefficients. A technique is presented to easily determine absorbent compound concentration ratios in a turbid media from three optical reflectance spectra, in the visible range, measured for source-detector distances less than 1cm. The validity of the method is experimentally established, in cases of sets of diluted milk containing absorbent inks, over a relatively wide range of absorption (0.05-0.5 cm(-1)) and reduced scattering (10-20 cm(-1)) coefficients.