Light-tissue Interaction

6 EC

Semester 1, period 1

5354LITI6Y

Owner Master Physics and Astronomy (joint degree)
Coordinator D.J. Faber
Part of Master Physics and Astronomy, track Physics of Life and Health, year 1

Course manual 2017/2018

Course content

This course focuses on the physics of the interaction of light with biological tissue. Light can be used for diagnostic and treatment purposes; however the main focus will be on diagnostics. The first classes cover the physical background of LTE, focusing on light absorption and scattering properties, and their relation to physiological and metabolic parameters of the tissue. Different theories for scattering and absorption will be discussed, first on the 'single particle' level, then scaling up to larger tissue volumes (see the list below). In the last quarter of the course, guest lecturers will discuss state-of-the-art optical techniques for tissue characterization. The course comprises of 4-hour sessions, during which part will be spent on lectures, and part on exercises and demonstrations.  

 

Study materials

Syllabus

  • comprised of book chapters, scientific articles, and class notes.

Practical training material

  • excersises during class and homework assignments.

Software

  • links to open source calculators

Objectives

The student will have knowledge of light scattering and absorption by individual tissues:

  • identify main absorbing compounds and describe and explain their spectral absorption characteristics on physical grounds.
  • relate the distribution of absorbers in tissue to measured optical spectra
  • identify main scattering particles and describe and explain their spectral scattering characteristics on physical grounds.
  • become familiar with different scattering formalisms, e.g. Rayleigh scattering, Mie scattering, Rayleigh Gans scattering and their limits of applicability
  • relate the distribution of scatterers in tissue to measured spectra, e.g. Percus Yevick theory of position correlations, continuous fluctuation 1st Born approximation 

The student will become familiar with common physical and numerical approaches to light tissue interaction:

  • single light scattering
  • multiple light scattering, radiative transport equation, 1st order diffusion approximation and higher order approximations to the RTE
  • Monte Carlo simulations of light transport in tissue.

The student will have sufficient background to become acquainted with various optical methods for tissue characterization, and will be able to list the contrast mechanism, sensitivity and range of applicability as taught by guest lecturers:

  • Optical Coherence Tomography for imaging tissues and extracting functional metabolic information
  • Raman Spectroscopy for identifying molecular compounds and concentrations in tissue
  • Multiphoton Microscopy for imaging specific molecular compounds
  • Wavefront shaping to focus in turbid media
  • Dynamic light scattering, diffusive wave spectroscopy and laser speckle contrast imaging

Teaching methods

  • Lecture
  • Self-study
  • Fieldwork/excursion

Will be announced.

Learning activities

Activity

Number of hours

Zelfstudie

168

Attendance

Requirements concerning attendance (OER-B).

  • In addition to, or instead of, classes in the form of lectures, the elements of the master’s examination programme often include a practical component as defined in article 1.2 of part A. The course catalogue contains information on the types of classes in each part of the programme. Attendance during practical components is mandatory.

    • Assessment

    Item and weight Details

    Final grade

    100%

    Tentamen 1

    100%

    Hertentamen

    Fraud and plagiarism

    The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

    Course structure

    Class Onderwerpen Studiestof
    1  Maxwell’s equations, Kramers Kronig dispersion relations, absorption efficiency/cross
    section/coefficient.     		  class slides
    2  Discrete random media; absorption by suspensions vs. absorption by solutions. Pair correlation
    function.     		 class slides
    Research paper: Duysens, absorption of suspensions vs. solutions. Derivation up to eq. 4.
    Research paper: Finlay et al, effect of pigment packing. Modern derivation of Duysens’ idea. 
    3  Optical properties of blood, light scattering by single particles, scattering
    efficiency/coefficient/cross section; phase function; scattering anisotropy. Independent scattering
    (no interference) by more than one particle.     		  class slides
    vd Hulst Chapter 2 – general formalism of light scattering. 
    4  Optical properties of blood, light scattering by single particles, scattering
    efficiency/coefficient/cross section; phase function; scattering anisotropy. Independent scattering
    (no interference) by more than one particle. Probabilistic interpretation, expectation value of the
    path length.    		  class slides
    Chandrasekhar - Appendix III page 81: explains how a Bernoulli distribution converges to a
    Poisson distribution for large number of particles.
    Rayleigh Scattering.pdf - Chapter 6 of Van der Hulst, light scattering by small particles - scattering
    by particles smaller compared to wavelength
    5  Scattering by a dilute medium (independent scattering), definition of extinction coefficient (all losses:
    absorption + scattering); effective medium, effective refractive index    		  class slides
    vdHulst Chapter 4 – wave propagation in medium containing independent scatterers.
    Research paper: Wang et al, vertex propagor model for photon transport. Only the 1D part.
    6    
    7    
    8    

    Contact information

    Coordinator

    • D.J. Faber