“…However, in the foot, the thickness of the epidermis and dermis layers is greater than that in other parts of the body, and their composition is also different, which leads to varying hardness in the sole region (ODLAND, 1991). The placing of the fibres at various locations away from the input fibre means that they collect backscattered photons with a major contribution from the respective depths (CuI and OSTRANDER, 1992;CHACKO and SINGH, 1999;KUMAR and SINGH, 2003a). The variation in the scattering and absorption coefficients and the anisotropy parameter in various regions, except in the epidermis layer, is less (TUCHIN, 1997).…”