Scintillation index of optical spherical wave propagating through biological tissue

Abstract

Effects of the tissue turbulence on the propagation of an optical spherical wave are analysed. For this purpose, scintillation index of an optical spherical wave which is propagating in a soft tissue is formulated and evaluated in weakly turbulent soft tissue. Scintillation index of the optical spherical wave is examined against the changes in the tissue parameters which are the tissue length between the optical spherical wave source and the detector, random variations in the refractive index of the tissue and the outer scale of the tissue turbulence. According to our graphical outputs, it is observed that increase in the random variations of the refractive index of the tissue results in an increase in the scintillation index at a certain realization of the turbulence spectrum. On the other hand, larger outer scales and longer tissue lengths yield larger scintillations. The variation of the scintillation index of the optical spherical wave versus the wavelength is also investigated. It is found that at small tissue lengths, wavelength has almost no effect on the scintillations; however, when the tissue length reaches a certain value, shorter wavelengths give rise to larger intensity fluctuations.

Keywords:

• Optical wave propagation
• optical imaging
• tissue turbulence
• scintillation index