ABSTRACT
This chapter is an overview of the theories and derived models routinely employed to describe light transport in turbid tissue-like scattering media. The relative merits and drawbacks of the models are discussed, and commonly used terms are highlighted. The description of optical radiation propagation within the random scattering media, like a biological tissue, is based on the radiative transfer equation that forms a basis of several popular solutions. The chapter considers the unified Monte Carlo (MC) approach for modeling of coherent polarized light propagation in a complex multiple scattering medium. The developed model utilizes Jones formalism specially adapted for the online object oriented MC approach developed earlier. Linear polarization possesses no such sense of the direction in which it travels. It was also demonstrated that the use of circularly polarized light for reflective target detection in highly scattering medium significantly improves the image contrast.
