Spectrophotometric determination of turbid optical parameters without using an integrating sphere.

Spectrophotometric quantification of turbidity by multiple optical parameters has wide-ranging applications in material analysis and life sciences. A robust system design needs to combine hardware for precise measurement of light signals with software to accurately model measurement configuration and rapidly solve a sequence of challenging inverse problems. We have developed and validated a design approach and performed system validation based on radiative transfer theory for determination of absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, and anisotropy factor without using an integrating sphere. Accurate and rapid determination of parameters and spectra is achieved for microsphere suspension samples by combining photodiode-based measurement of four signals with the Monte Carlo simulation and perturbation-based inverse calculations. The three parameters of microsphere suspension samples have been determined from the measured signals as functions of wavelength from 400 to 800 nm and agree with calculated results based on the Mie theory. It has been shown that the inverse problems in the cases of microsphere suspension samples are well posed with convex cost functions to yield unique solutions, and it takes about 1 min to obtain the three parameters per wavelength.