Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging for Quantitative Assessment of Tissues Chromophores Concentration

Quantitative evaluation of the content of key tissue chromophores is of great importance for biomedical diagnostics. However, in general, it is impossible to estimate the true concentration of chromophore from the diffuse reflected light, as both absorption and scattering contribute to the overall reflected signal. Spatial frequency domain imaging is one of the promising techniques which allows for the disentanglement of scattering and absorption coefficients and further quantitative mapping of tissue chromophores. Yet, spatial frequency domain imaging demands high-cost equipment which hinders its applicability for biomedical diagnostics. In this work, we evaluate the feasibility of spatial frequency domain imaging low-cost implementation using LED-projector both on the optical phantoms in vitro and human skin in vivo. We demonstrate that the relative error achieved by this technique is of ~5% and allows for rapid quantitative mapping of chromophores in tissues such as oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin, melanin etc.