EXPRESS: Optical Characterization of Coconut Oil from 600 Nm to 1600 Nm for Use as a Tissue Phantom

Optical phantoms are widely used to characterize diffuse optical setups and data analysis methods for in-vivo/ex-vivo measurements. Coconut oil is an interesting compound to use in phantoms, because it could be used to model lipidic tissues, such as the one in breast tissue. In this paper, we measure the absorption and scattering spectra of coconut oil from 600 to 1600 nm, encompassing the so-called "therapeutic window". To cover the entire range, we exploit a supercontinuum pulsed laser and a superconducting nanowire single photon detector operating in the time domain. Finally, we demonstrate the use of a homogeneous coconut oil phantom to characterize a hyperspectral continuous-wave (CW) setup.