Optics of Turbid Media

Optical properties of turbid media (e.g., atmosphere, ocean, tissues, etc.)  can be studied using a solid ground of radiative transfer theory(https://archive.org/details/RadiativeTransfer). The main interest of radiative transfer theory is focused on calculation of the Stokes vector of light field at a given location, time, and propagation direction both outside and inside turbid media. The Stokes vector has four components, which have the dimension of light intensity and can be used to derive both intensity and polarization characteristics of light beam propagated in a turbid medium. Various instruments can be used to measure the components of the Stokes vector both inside and outside turbid media. The results of measurements are influenced by the local optical characteristics of a given medium such as scattering and absorption coefficients and phase matrix. Therefore, they can be derived from the measurements. This enables the diagnostic of turbid media, which is of importance for many applications, including determination of optical characteristics of atmosphere and ocean. As a matter of fact,  local optical characteristics depend on concentration, shape, size and chemical composition of various particles suspended in turbid media. Therefore, the characteristics of suspended particles can be derived from the measurements of the Stokes parameters. Such an approach is used in many applications including satellite remote sensing of atmosphere and ocean.