Application of circularly polarized light for non‐invasive diagnosis of cancerous tissues and turbid tissue‐like scattering media

Abstract

Polarization-based optical techniques have become increasingly popular in the field of biomedical diagnosis. In the current report we exploit the directional awareness of circularly and/or elliptically polarized light backscattered from turbid tissue-like scattering media. We apply circularly and elliptically polarized laser light which illuminates the samples of interest, and a standard optical polarimeter is used to observe the polarization state of light backscattered a few millimeters away from the point of incidence. We demonstrate that the Stokes vector of backscattered light depicted on a Poincaré sphere can be used to assess a turbid tissue-like scattering medium. By tracking the Stokes vector of the detected light on the Poincaré sphere, we investigate the utility of this approach for characterization of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue samples in vitro. The obtained results are discussed in the framework of a phenomenological model and the results of a polarization tracking Monte Carlo model, developed in house. Schematic illustration of the experimental approach utilizing circularly and elliptically polarized light for probing turbid tissue-like scattering media.

Tissue Optics and Photonics: Light-Tissue Interaction

“…For many tissues, µ t is much greater than (µ a + µ s ′). Therefore, in certain situations, it is impossible to detect pure ballistic photons (photons that do not experience scattering), but forward scattered photons retain their initial polarization and can be used for imaging purpose [5,9,10,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77]. There was experimentally demonstrated that laser radiation retains linear polarization on the level of P L ≤ 0.1 within 2.5l tr .…”

“…The polarization imaging is a prospective direction in tissue optics [5,9,10,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77]. The registration of two-dimensional polarization patterns for the backscattering of a polarized incident narrow laser beam is the basis for this technique.…”

Quantitatively characterizing the microstructural features of breast ductal carcinoma tissues in different progression stages by Mueller matrix microscope

“…Polarization imaging is regarded as a promising technique for probing the microstructures, especially the anisotropic fibrous components of complex scattering samples [11,12]. Among the available polarimetric techniques, Mueller matrix imaging has many distinctive advantages, such as providing label-free and comprehensive descriptions on the properties of tissues, cells, and other biological specimens [13][14][15][16].…”

Characterizing microstructures of cancerous tissues using multispectral transformed Mueller matrix polarization parameters

“…Polarization imaging techniques are recognized as potentially powerful methods to detect the pathological changes of biological tissues [1][2][3][4]. In the past decades many attempts have been made for clinical diagnosis applications using simple polarization parameters such as the degree of polarization (DOP) [5,6] and difference polarization (DP) [7].…”