The applicability of near-infrared time-resolved spectroscopy to rat liver surgery was investigated. First, the technical reliability in determining the absorption coefficient (mu(a)) and reduced scattering coefficient (mu'(s)) of the liver was checked. Next, boundary effects in determining mu(a) and mu'(s) of the rat liver were examined. Finally, changes in mu(a) and mu'(s) of rat liver with ischaemia were directly measured by TRS. Our TRS system showed that the mu(a) value held a linear correlation with the ink concentration in a lipid emulsion until mu(a) reached 1.2 cm(-1), while the mu'(s) was fairly independent. The mu(a) values of blood-free rat liver and blood-containing rat liver at 780 nm were observed to be 0.43 cm(-1) and 0.67 cm(-1) by using the matching method, indicating that TRS is reliable in determining mu(a) and mu'(s) of the liver. Possible errors in mu(a) and mu'(s) determination due to the boundary effects of the rat liver were as small as 7%, when the mu(a) value was as high as observed for the liver. The oxygen saturation of haemoglobin (SO2) was changed from 64.9% to 8.0%, and the haemoglobin content (THB) from 189.1 microM to 131.6 microM by ischaemia. Mu'(s) dynamically changed in the range 7.06 cm(-1) to 11.36 cm(-1). We conclude that time-resolved measurement is applicable in the high-mu(a) region observed in the liver, and can give quantitative estimations of SO2 and THB in the liver.