Fast imaging of high-resolution two-dimensional effective attenuation profile from diffuse reflectance

Biological tissue is non-homogeneous in nature. It is difficult to measure its optical properties due to non-uniformity throughout the tissue being tested. To obtain the spatial distribution of optical parameters, conventional approaches use an array of light sources and detectors to reconstruct the image, thus, there is very limited spatial resolution. In contrast, solutions that provide high resolution have a high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a fast, simple scheme to resolve the effective attenuation profile from the spatial diffuse reflectance. Rather than giving one single value for the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients, a novel algorithm is proposed for the reconstruction of an effective attenuation profile in 2-dimension from a diffuse reflectance curve. This technique is applied to the reconstruction of a 2-D effective attenuation profile. By obtaining the diffuse reflectance image from a camera and using the algorithm developed here, fast imaging of the effective attenuation profile with relatively high spatial resolution can be achieved.