Optical properties of flowing bovine blood in vitro

Summary form only given. There is a great need in measuring a number of medically important blood parameters in a simple, nondestructive way. This speaks in favor of optical measurements. Blood is a very complex medium, and to measure a single parameter, one has to assure that variations in other blood properties do not effect the results. One such complication with optical measurements of whole blood is the very strong light scattering from the densely packed and deformable red blood cells (RBC). Many studies have been conducted to investigate the scattering properties of diluted blood, but very few to study whole blood. This study is directed towards gaining a better understanding of the optical properties of flowing whole blood. This study is directed towards gaining a better understanding of the optics properties of flowing whole blood. The study incorporates a model for absolute measurements of the absorption and scattering coefficients in flowing whole blood. Linearly polarized light was used to assess the possible anisotropy of the scattering induced by the flow velocity gradient.