Interferometric near-infrared spectroscopy (Conference Presentation)

We introduce and implement interferometric near-infrared spectroscopy (iNIRS), which simultaneously extracts the optical and dynamic properties of turbid media from the analysis of the spectral interference fringe pattern. The spectral interference fringe pattern is measured using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a frequency swept narrow bandwidth light source such that the temporal intensity autocorrelations can be determined for all photon path lengths. This approach enables time-of-flight (TOF) resolved measurement of scatterer motion, which is a feature inaccessible in well-established diffuse correlation spectroscopy techniques. We prove this by analyzing intensity correlations of the light transmitted through diffusive fluid phantoms with photon random walks of up to 55 (approximately 110 scattering events) using laser sweep rates on the order of 100kHz. Thus, the results we present here advance diffuse optical methods by enabling simultaneous determination of depth-resolved optical properties and dynamics in highly scattering samples.