Fractal mechanism of light scattering for tissue optical biopsy

The interaction of light with tissue and cells is the underlying mechanism for optical biomedical spectroscopy and imaging to detect pathology changes. We use fractal continuous random media to model visible and near infrared light scattering by biological tissue and cell suspensions, which provides a simple relation between the morphological feature of the sample and its light scattering property. Good agreement with experimental results is found for this fractal continuous random medium model. A novel optical biopsy scheme of oblique incidence Fourier reflectometry is proposed for spectroscopic tissue diagnosis based on the fractal continuous random medium model.