The regular transmittance of light or similar radiation through a flowing suspension of particles fluctuates because of the random occurrence of particles in the beam.In the work presented here, a theory for this fluctuating behaviour with the emphasison dispersions of mm-length slender cylindrical particles having circular crosssections is given. The particles in question are wood pulp fibres, which as a first approximation are considered to have a cylinder shape. Four possible measurementprinciples are described theoretically and experimentally. The four principles are for the measurement of concentration, length distribution characterized as lengthclasses, mean length, and mean width. The usefulness in industrial process monitoring of two of these principles is exemplified with pulp measurements. In order to estimate model errors, numerical simulations were used. Although other techniques such as image analysis may compete, the technique presented here is attractive because of the simplicity of the measurement device used. / QC 20100806