Аннотация:This paper compares sensitivity to blood oxygenation of different schemes of detecting light scattered from or transmitted through a slab of tissue considered in the frames of a multilayer model. Comparison is made from the viewpoint of the sensitivity to oxygen saturation of certain blood volume confined within lower layers of different average thicknesses mimicking the upper and lower plexuses of skin, dermis and hypodermis. The model also includes upper layers, mimicking stratum corneum and epidermis, consisting of prickle and basal cell layers. The following signals were simulated with Monte Carlo technique and compared: diffuse scattering indicatrice, OCT signal, spatially resolved diffuse reflectance, time-of-flight and spectrophotometry signals. The optical parameters of the layers were chosen within the ranges corresponding to experimental data published in literature and our own OCT measurements. Heyney-Greenstein function was used as a phase function for all considered layers with anisotropy factor value varying for various layers. Blood fractions of different layers were chosen according to available data for diastolic state. We considered two wavelengths of 660 and 890 nm, located at different sides of the isobestic point of 805 nm, where the absorption coefficients of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin are equal. These wavelengths are used in pulse oximetry. Our simulation results show, that the highest sensitivity to changes in oxygen content in blood is at the wavelength of 660 nm, where the difference between absorption coefficient values is significant. For this wavelength all the techniques except OCT show good sensitivity to blood oxygenation in the model tissue. For the second wavelength goniophotometry, spatially resolved diffuse reflectance, and spectorphotometry exhibit sensitivity to oxygenation, but it is lower than for 660 nm due to a smaller absorption coefficient mismatch.