Effective infrared absorption coefficient for photothermal radiometric measurements in biological tissues

Although photothermal radiometric (PTR) measurements commonly employ broad-band signal acquisition to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, all reported studies apply a fixed infrared (IR) absorption coefficient to simplify the involved signal analysis. In samples with large spectral variation of micro(lambda) in mid-IR, which includes most biological tissues, the selection of the effective IR absorption coefficient value (micro(eff)) can strongly affect the accuracy of the result. We present a novel analytical approach for the determination of optimal micro(eff) from spectral properties of the sample and radiation detector. In extensive numerical simulations of pulsed PTR temperature profiling in human skin using three common IR radiation detectors and several acquisition spectral bands, we demonstrate that our approach produces viable values micro(eff). Two previously used analytical estimations perform much worse in the same comparison.