Theoretical optimal modulation frequencies for scattering parameter estimation and ballistic photon filtering in diffusing media

The efficiency of using intensity modulated light for the estimation of scattering properties of a turbid medium and for ballistic photon discrimination is theoretically quantified in this article. Using the diffusion model for modulated photon transport and considering a noisy quadrature demodulation scheme, the minimum-variance bounds on estimation of parameters of interest are analytically derived and analyzed. The existence of a variance-minimizing optimal modulation frequency is shown and its evolution with the properties of the intervening medium is derived and studied. Furthermore, a metric is defined to quantify the efficiency of ballistic photon filtering which may be sought when imaging through turbid media. The analytical derivation of this metric shows that the minimum modulation frequency required to attain significant ballistic discrimination depends only on the reduced scattering coefficient of the medium in a linear fashion for a highly scattering medium.