Abstract
Optical imaging offers exquisite sensitivity and resolution for assessing biological tissue in microscopy applications; however, for samples that are greater than a few hundred microns in thickness (such as whole tissue biopsies), spatial resolution is substantially limited by the effects of light scattering. To improve resolution, time- and angular-domain methods have been developed to reject detection of highly scattered light. This work utilizes a modified version of a commonly used Monte Carlo light propagation software package (MCML) to present the first comparison of time- and angular-domain improvements in spatial resolution with respect to varying sample thickness and optical properties (absorption and scattering). Specific comparisons were made at various tissue thicknesses (1-6 mm) assuming either typical (average) soft tissue scattering properties, μ(s) ' = 10 cm(-1), or low scattering properties, μ(s) ' = 3.4 cm(-1), as measured in lymph nodes.