Significance: Raman spectroscopy (RS) applied to surgical guidance is attracting attention among scientists in biomedical optics. Offering a computational platform for studying depth-resolved RS and probing molecular specificity of different tissue layers is of crucial importance to increase the precision of these techniques and facilitate their clinical adoption.

Aim: The aim of this work was to present a rigorous analysis of inelastic scattering depth sampling and elucidate the relationship between sensing depth of the Raman effect and optical properties of the tissue under interrogation.

Approach: A new Monte Carlo (MC) package was developed to simulate absorption, fluorescence, elastic, and inelastic scattering of light in tissue. The validity of the MC algorithm was demonstrated by comparison with experimental Raman spectra in phantoms of known optical properties using nylon and polydimethylsiloxane as Raman-active compounds. A series of MC simulations were performed to study the effects of optical properties on Raman sensing depth for an imaging geometry consistent with single-point detection using a handheld fiber optics probe system.

Results: The MC code was used to estimate the Raman sensing depth of a handheld fiber optics system. For absorption and reduced scattering coefficients of 0.001 and 1  mm^−  1, the sensing depth varied from 105 to 225  μm for a range of Raman probabilities from ^{10  −  6} to ^{10  −  3}. Further, for a realistic Raman probability of ^{10  −  6}, the sensing depth ranged between 10 and 600  μm for the range of absorption coefficients 0.001 to 1.4  mm^−  1 and reduced scattering coefficients of 0.5 to 30  mm^−  1.

Conclusions: A spectroscopic MC light transport simulation platform was developed and validated against experimental measurements in tissue phantoms and used to predict depth sensing in tissue. It is hoped that the current package and reported results provide the research community with an effective simulating tool to improve the development of clinical applications of RS.