Optical phantoms for ultrasound-modulated optical tomography

Optical phantoms are widely used for simulating optical properties of biological tissues. Their accurate design and fabrication are important factors in validating and designing biomedical systems. We discuss fabrication and measurement of optical phantoms in ultrasound-modulated optical tomography. The optical properties of the phantoms are measured by an oblique-incidence diffuse reflectance spectrometer, which can accurately measure the wavelength-dependent absorption and reduced scattering coefficients of optical phantoms. In addition, the acoustic properties of the phantoms are discussed.