The theory of the back-scattering of light by blood

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on the back-scattering of light by blood the authors have studied three models of the scattering of a cylindrical light beam by a half-space. In each case solution of the photodiffusion equation yields integral expressions for the photon density everywhere in the medium and for the back-scattered flux at a point on the surface. Multipole expansion of these integrals leads to some useful approximations and also provides insight into a 'dipole' approximation used by previous authors.