Development of biological tissue-equivalent phantoms for optical imaging.

Optical characteristics of freshly isolated tissues depend on their color and composition. The surface backscattered profile, which account for the tissue compositional variation in fresh excised sheep's heart, lungs, bone and muscle, were measured by multi-probe reflectometer. Optical phantoms were prepared from paraffin wax by mixing a specific combination of wax color materials till the surface backscattered profile of these matched with that of the biological tissues. The optical parameters absorption coefficient (micro(a)), reduced scattering coefficient (micro(s)) and anisotropy factor (g) of these phantoms, are the same as that of biological tissues and are obtained by matching their surface backscattered profiles with that as simulated by Monte Carlo procedure. The maximum and minimum values of absorption coefficient are for the phantoms of lungs (1.0 cm(-1)) and muscle (0.02 cm(-1)), whereas, for scattering coefficient these values are for muscle (21.2 cm(-1)) and bone (13.08 cm(-1)).