Patent ID: 7800746

Claim:
A method for identifying physical properties of a target, said method comprising the steps of: providing a source of broad spectrum incident light; illuminating the target with the incident light; separately recording the intensity of multiple preselected spectra of one of backscattered or through-transmitted light emergent from one or more preselected areas of the target illuminated with the incident light, at least one of the preselected areas equal to or less than microscopic in size, the multiple preselected spectra of emergent light resulting from refractive index fluctuations within the target; evaluating one or more properties of the one or more preselected areas of the targets by analyzing the intensity of the multiple spectra of emergent light, wherein the properties comprise one or more of: the size of particles, the concentration of particles, a refractive-index, a spatial distribution of the refractive-indices, a spatial distribution of the concentration of particles, a standard deviation of the refractive-index fluctuations, a variance of the refractive-index fluctuations, length scale of refractive-index fluctuations, a disorder strength of the refractive-index fluctuations, a standard deviation of the disorder strength, a probability density distribution of the disorder strength, a probability density distribution of a reflection coefficient, or an autocorrelation function of the reflection coefficient, respectively, of the target, wherein the reflection coefficient is a measure of a high-frequency spectral component of the emergent light; and determining the reflection coefficient via obtaining a difference between the intensity of the emergent light and a slow varying component of the intensity of the emergent light normalized by the intensity of the incident light, for the multiple spectra of emergent light.