Abstract
Peculiarities of light transport in Intralipid
solutions and the effect of glucose on light scattering properties of the
solution at two different Intralipid
concentrations were studied with optical coherence tomography (OCT) technique
in vitro. An open air OCT system using a superluminescent light source with center wavelength = 830 nm was used. 5% Intralipid
solutions were used to simulate a biological tissue (skin) in our experiment. Glucose concentrations at the
physiologically relevant level were added to Intralipid
solutions. Increasing Intralipid
concentration increases the scattering coefficient of the media meanwhile increasing glucose concentration increases the refractive index of the
media and reduces the scattering coefficient of the media. The experimental data were compared to Monte Carlo
simulations. We also made the simulations for 2% Intralipid
solution. The results indicate that glucose added to 2 and 5% Intralipid
solutions changes their scattering properties, which is manifested by a decrease in the slope of the OCT signal. This finding shows the ways of using OCT for sensing glucose and monitoring the alterations of its content in
biotissues. Some discrepancies between measurements and simulations were found, which need further investigation.