The purpose of this research was to develop a new diffuse reflectance model to facilitate rapid and accurate extraction of tissue physiological characteristics from diffuse reflectance spectra. The model used hybrid statistic formulas to describe the probability of a photon reemerging at the tissue surface and its weight attenuation during migration. Validations by Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the model is accurate for a wide range of optical parameters and short source-detector separations with an error less than 10%. Furthermore, the model was incorporated in the process of interpreting diffuse reflectance spectra from a set of tissue simulating phantoms; the dynamic changes in hemoglobin oxygenation of the phantoms were obtained accurately. Findings of this research demonstrate the utility of the new diffuse reflectance model for extracting physiological information from tissue diffuse reflectance spectra, and due to speed and accuracy advantages over existing models, applicability for use in the clinical setting.
