Measurement of the optical properties of solid biomedical phantoms at the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Solid phantoms that serve as a proxy for human tissue provide a convenient test subject for optical medical imaging devices. In order to determine the quantitative performance of a given system, the absolute optical properties of the test subject must be known. Currently there is no national scale applicable to the scattering and absorption properties of solid diffuse tissue phantoms that would provide traceability and estimated measurement uncertainties for optical imaging applications. This paper describes progress in the development of a facility dedicated to the determination of the optical properties of solid biomedical phantoms. A brief description of the system, data analysis, Graphical User Interface (GUI), and measurement uncertainties is presented. The design is based on a double-integrating sphere, steady-state domain approach. The initial evaluation of the system includes the measurement of solid phantoms and a comparison to the manufacturer’s values that were determined by a time resolved approach. The initial results indicate that measurement agreement is within the estimated uncertainties with the coverage factor k=2.