Optical method to extract the reduced scattering coefficient from tissue: theory and experiments.

Tissues are considered challenging in terms of structure and composition analysis due to their tendency to multiple scatter the incident light. One of the most common theories for extracting optical properties of tissue is diffusion reflection (DR). In this Letter, we propose a new paradigm for estimating the reduced scattering coefficient of a medium from the reflected light phase. The technique is a modified DR theory wherein the phase is calculated by the product of the wavenumber and the average pathlength. This theory is supported by the reconstructed phase of tissue-like phantom experiments from an iterative algorithm.