Introduction NIRS is an upcoming method for clinical diagnostics, which promises to provide urgently needed information about microcirculation and related metabolic states and dynamics of metabolism in the brain. Anyway, the interpretation of the acquired signals can be difficult since all cranial structures as scalp, skull, dura mater, pia mater, gray and white matter, collectively alter the spatial sensitivity. It would be most valuable to be able to mimic experimentally the optical properties of such biological structures and processes and to study them and their influence on the signal independently and under controlled conjoint conditions. This is possible with a physical phantom. Objective Creation of a physical phantom, which allows spatial sensitivity mapping to investigate the effect of spatially distributed combined scattering and absorption.

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