Design of a new optic probe for diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is a non-invasive spectroscopic technique for studying the optical properties of a biological tissue and hence can be used to detect chromophore concentration from the skin tissue. Here, a novel optical probe is presented to utilize diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The proposed device contains an optical head that is easier to manufacture, more compact and more affordable than the existing fiber probes. This optical head consists of 19 fiber cables. The outer 12 fiber cables are used to expose the skin surface with a white light produced by a LED. And the reflected light emerging from the various layers of the tissue is collected by the inner 7 fiber cables, which is coupled to a spectrometer.