Light propagation in dry and wet softwood

Light propagation in dry and wet softwood (silver fir) was investigated experimentally and theoretically. The spatially and time resolved reflectance from softwood was measured. Light propagation was modeled with Monte Carlo simulations considering the microstructure of softwood. By comparing the spatially resolved reflectance we found that all characteristics of the experimentally obtained iso-intensity contour lines were recovered by the theory. In addition, the reduced scattering and the absorption coefficients were determined in the time domain by fitting a solution of the diffusion equation to Monte Carlo simulations and to measurements. Good qualitative agreement was obtained between the experimentally and theoretically derived optical properties. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.