Investigation of reflectance sampling depth in biological tissues for various common illumination/collection configurations.

Knowledge of light penetration characteristics is very important in almost all studies in biomedical optics. In this work, the reflectance sampling depth in biological tissues was investigated using Monte Carlo simulations for various common illumination/collection configurations. The analysis shows that the average sampling depth can be described by two simple empirical analytical expressions over the entire typical ranges of absorption and scattering properties relevant to in vivo biological tissue, regardless of the specific illumination/collection configuration details. These results are promising and helpful for the quick, efficient, and accurate design of reflectance studies for various biological tissue applications.