Monte Carlo simulation of light transmission through living tissues

Abstract

To analyze the fundamental characteristics of light transmitted through living tissues, we used the Monte Carlo method to trace the paths of the rays incident upon slabs of particles. The slabs contained either (i) two types of scattering particles in a solution or (ii) one type of particle with pigment added to the solution. Temporal analyses of the transmittance have illustrated that the differences in the optical density among the slabs having different absorption coefficients with the same scattering coefficient vary linearly with time. Also, their gradients have been shown to be proportional to the differences in the absorption coefficients, thus verifying the microscopic Beer-Lambert law in highly scattering media when temporally resolved measurement is used.