查看文章

Analog and digital technologies are presented for precise measurement of propagation delay of photons from source and detector placed on portions of the human body. The goal of the apparatus design is to quantify absorption and scattering induced by biological pigments and biological structures, respectively. Body tissues are highly scattering with a mean distance between scatterers of less than a mm (at 700–850 nm). Significant absorption is mainly due to 5%–10% of the tissue volume occupied by blood. Measurement of and is done by both time and frequency domain equipment. This article focuses upon frequency domain equipment because of its simplicity, reduced noise bandwidth, versatility, and the strong analogy to very high frequency/ultrahigh frequency communication devices, particularly those using phase modulation. Comparisons are made of homodyne and heterodyne systems …