Calibration of scattering and absorption properties of a liquid diffusive medium at NIR wavelengths. Time-resolved method

In this paper, a general method to calibrate the absorption coefficient of an absorber and the reduced scattering coefficient of a liquid diffusive medium, based on time- resolved measurements, is reported. An exhaustive analysis of the error sources affecting the estimation is also performed. The method has been applied with a state- of- the- art time-resolved instrumentation to determine the intrinsic absorption coefficient of Indian ink and the reduced scattering coefficient of Intralipid-20%, with a standard error smaller than 1% and 2%, respectively. Finally, the results have been compared to those retrieved for the same compounds by applying a continuous wave method recently published, obtaining an agreement within the error bars. This fact represents a cross validation of the two independent calibration methods. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America.