hv photonics Article The Optical Effective Attenuation Coefficient as an Informative Measure of Brain Health in Aging Antonio M. Chiarelli 1,2,* , Kathy A. Low 1, Edward L. Maclin 1, Mark A. Fletcher 1, Tania S. Kong 1,3, Benjamin Zimmerman 1, Chin Hong Tan 1,4,5 , Bradley P. Sutton 1,6, Monica Fabiani 1,3,* and Gabriele Gratton 1,3,* 1 Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA 2 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University G. D’Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, 66100 Chieti, Italy 3 Psychology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA 4 Division of Psychology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639818, Singapore 5 Department of Pharmacology, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117600, Singapore 6 Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA * Correspondence:
[email protected] (A.M.C.);
[email protected] (M.F.);
[email protected] (G.G.) Received: 24 May 2019; Accepted: 10 July 2019; Published: 12 July 2019 Abstract: Aging is accompanied by widespread changes in brain tissue. Here, we hypothesized that head tissue opacity to near-infrared light provides information about the health status of the brain’s cortical mantle. In diffusive media such as the head, opacity is quantified through the Effective Attenuation Coefficient (EAC), which is proportional to the geometric mean of the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients. EAC is estimated by the slope of the relationship between source–detector distance and the logarithm of the amount of light reaching the detector (optical density).