Laser transillumination of breast tissue phantoms using time-resolved techniques.

The objective of this study was to evaluate a pulsed laser transillumination technique based on time-resolved detection on breast-tissue-like phantoms. Experiments have been performed on tissue-like plastic phantoms with different scattering characteristics. The effects of time-gate width, size, localisation and refractive index of hidden objects have been scrutinised. Our study showed that the shorter the time-gate the higher the contrast. The contrast is very dependent on the size of the hole, whereas the full width half maximum is not. Furthermore, the investigation showed that the changes of early detected light in an experimental setting is due to scattering, and not to a higher speed of the transmitted light.