CW and time domain procedures for accurate calibration of optical properties of liquid diffusive media at NIR wavelengths

In spite of many progresses achieved both with theories and with experiments in studying light propagation through diffusive media, a reliable method for accurate measurements of the optical properties of diffusive media at NIR wavelengths is, in our opinion, still missing. It is therefore difficult to create a reference diffusive medium. We describe two methods in the CW and time domain to calibrate the reduced scattering coefficient of a liquid diffusive medium and the absorption coefficient of an absorber with a standard error smaller than 2% for both the coefficients. © 2007 SPIE-OSA.