Optical attenuation coefficient of skin under low compression

In various biomedical optics therapies, knowledge of how light is absorbed or scattered by tissues is crucial. Currently, it is suspected that a low compression applied to the skin surface may improve light delivery into tissue. However, the minimum pressure needed to be applied to significantly increase the light penetration into the skin has not been determined. In this study, we used optical coherence tomography (OCT) to measure the optical attenuation coefficient of the human forearm dermis in a low compression regime (<8k P a). Our results show low pressures such as 4 kPa to 8 kPa are sufficient to significantly increase light penetration by decreasing the attenuation coefficient by at least 1.0m m ^-1.