A fresh look at the validity of the diffusion approximation for modeling fluorescence spectroscopy in biological tissue.
Fluorescence has become a widely used technique for applications in noninvasive diagnostic tissue spectroscopy. The standard model used for characterizing fluorescence photon transport in biological tissue is based on the diffusion approximation. On the premise that the total energy of excitation and fluorescent photon flows must be conserved, we derive the widely used diffusion equations in fluorescence spectroscopy and show that there must be an additional term to account for the transport of fluorescent photons. The significance of this additional term in modeling fluorescence spectroscopy in biological tissue is assessed.
Centre for Intelligent Systems Research, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3217, Australia. chinthah@gmail.com
Chintha Chamalie
CC
Handapangoda
Malin
M
Premaratne
Saeid
S
Nahavandi
D003198:Computer Simulation; D004058:Diffusion; D006801:Humans; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012867:Skin / Q000737:chemistry; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence / Q000379:methods*; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared