<title>Light dosimetry for focused and defocused beam irradiation in multi-layered tissue models</title>

Abstract

Treatment of acupuncture points, trigger points, joint inflammations in low level laser therapy as well as various applications of lasers for treatment of soft tissues in dental medicine, require irradiation by a narrow converging laser beam. The aim of this study is to compare light delivery produced by focused or defocused narrow beam irradiation in a multi-layered skin tissue model at increasing depth of the target. The task is solved by 3-D Monte-Carlo simulation for matched and mismatched refractive indices at the tissue/ambient medium interface. The modeled light beams have a circular cross-section at the tissue entrance with uniform or Gaussian intensity distribution. Three are the tissue models used in simulation : i) a bloodless skin layer; ii) a bloodless skin layer with embedded scattering object; iii) a skin layer with small blood vessels of varying size, which are modeled as infinite cylinders parallel to the tissue surface located at different depths. Optical properties (absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, anisotropy factor, g, and index of refraction) of different tissue constituents are chosen from the literature.