Constituents such as oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin are monitored non-invasively in an animal organ such as a brain with a spectrometric instrument by passing radiation through the organ. An input beam has a plurality of discrete wavelengths modulated with radio frequency. Output radiation is received by a detector from which output amplitude and output phase are determined for each wavelength. Absorption coefficient is computed from the amplitude and phase, and concentrations of constituents are thereby calculated.