Visibility of individual particles inside a dense particle ensemble.

Prompted by our expectation that even in a dense particle suspension there is a significant probability of straight paths through the particle field that permit the imaging of individual particles, we have been able to obtain real-time distinct images of small polystyrene spheres suspended in a transparent liquid under conditions when the sum of their scattering cross sections was 30 times the cross section of the signal wave. We replicated this new-found ability to observe particles inside a dense particle ensemble by employing a simple numerical model that imitates imaging of a point source of light through a layer of overlapping randomly distributed opaque disks.