Imaging 2D optical diffuse reflectance in skeletal muscle

We discovered a unique pattern of optical reflectance from fresh prerigor skeletal muscles, which can not be described using existing theories. A numerical fitting function was developed to quantify the equi-intensity contours of acquired reflectance images. Using this model, we studied the changes of reflectance profile during stretching and rigor process. We found that the prominent anisotropic features diminished after rigor completion. These results suggested that muscle sarcomere structures played important roles in modulating light propagation in whole muscle. When incorporating the sarcomere diffraction in a Monte Carlo model, we showed that the resulting reflectance profiles quantitatively resembled the experimental observation. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.