Study of a simple model for the transition between the ballistic and the diffusive regimes in diffusive media

What is it about?

A Monte Carlo simulation was utilized to investigate a simple model for the transition between the ballistic and the diffusive regimes in diffusive media. The simulation focuses on the propagation of visible and near-infrared light in biological tissues. This research has mainly two findings: (1) the transition can be described, as was found experimentally, with good accuracy by only two terms (ballistic and diffusive). (2) The model can be utilized for cases where the absorption coefficient is not negligible compared to the scattering coefficient by adding a power-law prefactor to the diffusive term.

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Why is it important?

In this paper, authors have investigated the validity of the model described in the papers Yaroshevsky et al. and Glasser et al. (A. Yaroshevsky, Z. Glasser, E. Granot, and S. Sternklar, "Transition from the ballistic to the diffusive regime in a turbid medium," Opt. Lett. 36, 1395-1397 (2011); Z. Glasser, A. Yaroshevsky, B. Barak, E. Granot and S. Sternklar, "Effect of measurement on the ballistic-diffusive transition in turbid media," J. Biomed. Opt. 18, 106006 (2013)) for different absorption values, by investigating the transition from the ballistic regime to the diffusive one. The study has theoretical character but it can have an impact on​ development and optimization of imaging technologies.