Plum pudding random medium model of biological tissue toward remote microscopy from spectroscopic light scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel plum pudding random medium model for biological tissue that accurately describes tissue light scattering and anisotropy, enabling noninvasive microscopic structural analysis from spectroscopic data.

Contribution

The paper presents the first comprehensive tissue model combining scattering structures and fractal background, linking microscopic tissue architecture to macroscopic spectroscopic measurements.

Findings

PPRM reproduces wavelength-dependent tissue scattering.

It explains anisotropy trends and scattering coefficients.

Demonstrates visualization of microscopic tissue alterations.

Abstract

Biological tissue has a complex structure and exhibits rich spectroscopic behavior. There is \emph{no} tissue model up to now able to account for the observed spectroscopy of tissue light scattering and its anisotropy. Here we present, \emph{for the first time}, a plum pudding random medium (PPRM) model for biological tissue which succinctly describes tissue as a superposition of distinctive scattering structures (plum) embedded inside a fractal continuous medium of background refractive index fluctuation (pudding). PPRM faithfully reproduces the wavelength dependence of tissue light scattering and attributes the "anomalous" trend in the anisotropy to the plum and the powerlaw dependence of the reduced scattering coefficient to the fractal scattering pudding. Most importantly, PPRM opens up a novel venue of quantifying the tissue architecture and microscopic structures on average from macroscopic probing of the bulk with scattered light alone without tissue excision. We demonstrate this potential by visualizing the fine microscopic structural alterations in breast tissue (adipose, glandular, fibrocystic, fibroadenoma, and ductal carcinoma) deduced from noncontact spectroscopic measurement.