title: Goniometric measurements of thick tissue using Monte Carlo simulations to obtain the single scattering anisotropy coefficient.
abstract: The scattering anisotropy, g, of tissue can be a powerful metric of tissue structure, and is most directly measured via goniometry and fitting to the Henyey-Greenstein phase function. We present a method based on an independent attenuation measurement of the scattering coefficient along with Monte Carlo simulations to account for multiple scattering, allowing the accurate determination of measurement of g for tissues of thickness within the quasi-ballistic regime. Simulations incorporating the experimental geometry and bulk optical properties show that significant errors occur in extraction of g values, even for tissues of thickness less than one scattering length without modeling corrections. Experimental validation is provided by determination of g in mouse muscle tissues and it is shown that the obtained values are independent of thickness. In addition we present a simple deconvolution-based method and show that it provides excellent estimates for high anisotropy values (above 0.95) when coupled with an independent attenuation measurement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering & Laboratory of Optical and Computational Instrumentation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706,  USA.
authors.forename: Gunnsteinn
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Steven L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Jacques
authors.forename: Kevin W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Eliceiri
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Campagnola