We study light propagation in biological tissue containing an absorbing obstacle. In particular, we solve the infinite-domain problem in which an absorbing plate of negligible thickness prevents a portion of the light from the source from reaching the detector plane. Inasmuch as scattering in the medium is sharply peaked in the forward direction, we replace the governing radiative transport equation with the Fokker-Planck equation. The problem is solved first by application of the Kirchhoff approximation to determine the secondary source distribution over the surface of the plate. That result is propagated to the detector plane by use of Green’s function. The Green’s function is given as an expansion of plane-wave modes that are calculated numerically. The radiance is shown to obey Babinet’s principle. Results from numerical computations that demonstrate this theory are shown.

© 2004 Optical Society of America

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