Elimination of amplitude-phase crosstalk in frequency domain near-infrared spectroscopy

Changes in phase that occur with changes in amplitude impose severe limitations on the accuracy of frequency domain near-infrared spectrometers. Phase is related to the photon pathlength in tissue and phase errors introduced by the instrument can be interpreted as changes in tissue oxygenation. The instrument described in this article employs a reference radio frequency modulated laser diode to eliminate the effects of amplitude-phase crosstalk and requires no feedback. Light from the reference laser diode does not pass through the medium under investigation but passes directly onto the detector. The reference and medium signals follow a common path through the detector and so the same phase error is imposed on both. Summing the reference and medium phase eliminates the crosstalk and enables the resultant to be attributed only to the photon pathlength within the medium. It is also demonstrated that elimination of amplitude-phase crosstalk is a natural consequence of a phased array configuration.