The choice of the diffusion coefficient to be used in photon diffusion theory has been a subject of discussion in recent publications on tissue optics. We compared several diffusion coefficients with the apparent diffusion coefficient from the more fundamental transport theory, D_app. Application to point sources in turbid media, for which exact solutions are available, showed that D_app has to be preferred. We give a simple equation to approximate D_app for several phase functions that apply to tissue optics. Reasons for the remaining discrepancies in diffusion coefficients applied to time-resolved and time-averaged descriptions of photon propagation in homogeneous turbid media are discussed.

© 2000 Optical Society of America

[Optical Society of America ]

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