Direct opto-acoustic in vitro measurement of the spatial distribution of laser radiation in biological media

The problem of opto-acoustic (AO) diagnostics of light scattering and absorption in biological media is considered. The objects under study were milk, bovine and porcine liver, and bovine muscle tissue. The forward and backward schemes for recording acoustic signals were used in experiments. The spatial distribution of the light intensity was measured for each biological medium from the temporal profile of the excited OA pulse and the absorption coefficient and reduced scattering coefficient were determined. Opto-acoustic signals were excited by a 1064-nm pulsed Nd:YAG laser and a tunable Ti:sapphire laser at 779 nm. It is shown that the proposed method can be used for obtaining a priori information on a biological medium in problems of optical and AO tomography.