Histopathological correlations of bulk tissue polarimetric images: Case study

Abstract

Polarimetric imaging and image analysis have gained increased interest in soft tissue analysis at the cellular level. However, polarimetric imaging has widely been tested on thin tissue sections to provide reliable information correlated with histopathological findings. Polarimetric bulk tissue analysis always offered an overall assessment of various tissue optical properties for diagnosis. In this study, the histopathological correlation of bulk tissue polarimetry images for soft tissues is discussed. The first-hand information on the use of bulk tissue Mueller polarimetry and image analysis as an alternative to tissue histopathology is presented for surgically extracted colon and breast tissues.

Toward the development of portable light emitting diode‐based polarization spectroscopy tools for breast cancer diagnosis

“…The malignant breast tissues are more disordered and heterogeneous due to infiltration and tumor cell proliferation, leading to multiple gradients and discontinuities in the refractive indexes [6, 26, 47–50]. This results in a higher density of the scattering microstructures in the malignant breast tissue, contributing to a higher scattering than adjacent normal breast tissue [8, 51]. While operating at 850 nm, the detected voltage showed better delineation between the malignant and adjacent normal than 940 nm.…”

“…The polarization‐sensitive near‐infrared spectroscopy (PS‐NIRS) technique provides additional tissue attributes such as depolarization index, degree of polarization that can potentially aid the surgeon to make an informed decision [8]. The emerging field of PS‐NIRS based methods offers non‐ionizing, high‐resolution functional imaging and better soft‐tissue contrast [9–11].…”

“…The tumorigenesis process involves extracellular matrix altering, which results in increased density, increase in extracellular matrix fibrosis and structural deformation of the collagen fibers [23–26]. However, for colon tissue samples [27], cervical tissue samples [28] due to malignancy, tissue heterogeneity is altered and results in the reduced number of scattering events due to the demolition of collagen fibers, contrary to the breast tissues [8].…”

“…In another work, Nishizawa et al [10] developed a spin‐LED‐based endoscope probe to quantify scattering events of cancer and normal biological tissues by using Monte Carlo codes. M. Sharma et al [8] reported a histopathological correlation of breast tissue. They quantified the mean value of depolarization index using Mueller matrix for normal breast tissue 0.7222 ± 0.0621 and cancerous tissue 0.7814 ± 0.046 to form a basis to differentiate cancer from normal tissue.…”

Study of the spatial scale stability of Mueller matrix parameters for textural characterization of biological tissues

“…Revealing the mechanisms of interaction between photons and complex biological tissues is one of the major goals of biomedical optics research, which is essential for therapeutic and diagnostic applications [1–9]. Polarization is one of the fundamental properties of light and a promising method that has been applied to many fields, including biological tissues [3, 10–14].…”