National Institute of Standards and Technology measurement service of the optical properties of biomedical phantoms: Current status

Published

March 24, 2016

Author(s)

Paul Lemaillet, Catherine C. Cooksey, Zachary H. Levine, Adam L. Pintar, Jeeseong Hwang, David W. Allen

Abstract

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained scales of reflectance and transmittance over several decades. Those scales are primarily intended for the regular transmittance, mirrors, and solid surface scattering diffusers. The rapidly growing area of optical medical imaging has necessitated the need for a scale for volume scattering of diffuse materials that are used to mimic the optical properties of tissue. Those materials are used as phantoms to evaluate and validate instruments under development of intended for clinical use. To address this need, a double-integrating sphere based instrument has been installed to measure the optical properties of tissue mimicking phantoms. The basic system and methods have been described in previous papers. An important attribute in establishing a viable calibration service is the estimation of measurement uncertainties. The use of custom models and comparisons with other established scales enabled initial uncertainty measurements. Here, we describe the continuation of those efforts to advance the understanding of the uncertainties through both independent measurements by the bidirectional reflectance distribution function and the bidirectional transmittance distribution function of a commercially available solid biomedical phantom. A Monte Carlo-based model is used and the resulting optical properties are compared to the values provided by the phantom manufacturer.

Citation

Proceedings of SPIE

Volume

9700

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

solid biomedical phantoms, double-integrating spheres, adding doubling, uncertainty budget, BRDF and BTDF

Citation

Lemaillet, P. , Cooksey, C. , Levine, Z. , Pintar, A. , Hwang, J. and Allen, D. (2016), National Institute of Standards and Technology measurement service of the optical properties of biomedical phantoms: Current status, Proceedings of SPIE, [online], https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2214569 (Accessed October 18, 2025)