Computation of the optical properties of turbid media from slope and curvature of spatially resolved reflectance curves.

The optical properties of turbid media were calculated from the curvature at the radial distance ρ(O) and the slope at the radial distance ρ* of simulated spatially resolved reflectance curves (ρ(O) (ρ*) denotes a decrease of the spatially resolved reflectance curve of 0.75 (2.4) orders of magnitude relative to the reflectance value at 1.2 mm). We found correlations between the curvature at ρ(O) and the reduced scattering coefficient as well as the slope at ρ* and the absorption coefficient. For the determination of the optical properties we used these two correlations. The calculation of the reduced scattering coefficient from the curvature at ρ(O) is practically independent from the absorption coefficient. Knowing the reduced scattering coefficient within a certain accuracy allows the determination of the absorption coefficient from the slope at ρ*. Additionally, we investigated the performance of an artificial neural network for the determination of the optical properties using the above explained correlations. This means we used the derivatives as input data. Our artificial neural network was capable to learn the mapping between the optical properties and the derivatives. In effect, the results for the determined optical properties improved in comparison to the above explained method. Finally, the procedure was compared to an artificial neural network that was trained without using the derivatives.