Abstract

Noncontact, frequency-domain measurements of diffusely reflected light are used to quantify optical properties of two-layer tissuelike turbid media. The irradiating source is a sinusoidal intensitymodulated plane wave, with modulation frequencies ranging from 10 to 1500 MHz. Frequencydependent phase and amplitude of diffusely reflected photon density waves are simultaneously fitted to a diffusion-based two-layer model to quantify absorption and reduced scattering parameters of each layer as well as the upper-layer thickness. Study results indicate that the optical properties of two-layer media can be determined with a percent accuracy of the order of ±9% and ±5% for μaand μs’, respectively. The accuracy of upper-layer thickness estimation is as good as ±6% when optical properties of upper and lower layers are known. Optical property and layer thickness prediction accuracy degrade significantly when more than three free parameters are extracted from data fits. Problems with convergence are encountered when all five free parameters must be deduced. © 2000 Optical Society of America.