Maria Rosário Pinheiro

Abstract
In this article, the use of diffuse reflectance (R-d) spectroscopy is explored to evaluate the diffusion properties of water and sucrose in skeletal muscle during optical clearing treatments. Treating muscle samples with sucrose-water solutions with different osmolarities, collimated transmittance (T-c) and R-d measurements were performed to obtain the diffusion time (t) and the diffusion coefficient (D) values that characterize the unique water and sucrose fluxes in the muscle and also the optical clearing mechanisms designated as tissue dehydration and refractive index matching. Considering the R-d measurements, the estimated t and D values for water in the muscle were 63.1s and 1.72x10(-6) cm(2)/s, while the ones estimated for sucrose were 261s and 4.86x10(-7) cm(2)/s. Comparing these values with the ones estimated from the T-c measurements, the relative differences observed for t and D were 1.6% and 2.8% in the case of water and 0.3% and 0.4% in the case of sucrose.