UV-NIR efficiency of the refractive index matching mechanism on colorectal muscle during treatment with different glycerol osmolarities

The evaluation of the optical clearing mechanisms in tissues provides information about the efficiency of the clearing treatment. One of such mechanisms is the refractive index matching, which is created by the partial replacement of tissue water by an optical clearing agent with higher refractive index, better matched to the index of tissue scatterers. With the objective of evaluating the refractive index matching mechanism for a wide spectral range and comparing its magnitude between treatments with different clearing agent osmolarities, thickness and collimated transmittance measurements were obtained from human colorectal muscle samples under treatment with 20%-, 40% and 60%-glycerol. Such measurements were used in a calculation model to obtain the refractive index kinetics for the interstitial fluid and for the whole tissue. The calculation results show that the refractive index matching has a stronger effect in the ultraviolet and that such matching is more effective for higher agent concentrations in the treating solutions.