<title>Mueller matrix imaging polarimetry in dermatology</title>

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated that polarized light may be useful in the discrimination between benign and malignant moles. In fact, imaging polarimetry could provide nonmvasive diagnosis ofa range ofdermatological disease states. However, in order to design an efficacious sensor for clinical use, the complete polarization-altering properties ofa particular disease must be well understood. We present Mueller matrix imaging polarimetryas atechnique for characterizing various dermatological diseases. PreliminaryMueller matrix imagery at 633 nm suggests that both malignant moles and lupus lesions maybe identified through polarimetric measurements. Malignant moles are found to be less depolarizing than the surrounding tissues, and lupus lesions are found to have rapidly varying retardance orientation.

Mueller polarimetric imaging for surgical and diagnostic applications: a review

“…The retardance contrast between healthy and obstructed regions of the bladder would be potentially useful to guide augmentation surgeries and monitoring the tissue functionality following tissue engineering therapies [21]. Mueller polarimetry or polarimetric imaging has furthermore been used to investigate muscles [146], normal and precancerous human cervix [147], oral [13] and lung tissues [148], radiofrequency ablated porcine myocardial tissue [149], skeletal muscle [150], growth of bacteria colonies [151], skin [152][153][154][155] including melanoma [156], animal tissues [144], bladders [137], the orientation of collagen fibres in 3-D space [23], red blood cell suspensions [157], etc.…”

Polarimetric Endoscope for Image Enhancement of Surface Micro-structure on Mucosa

“…This block outputs two images. One is Enhanced Color Intensity Image (1) in which the detected groove region is enhanced by bluish color, and the other is the Groove Gray Image that represents the groove position and edge strength as gray intensity. Polarimetric processing (1) can't reproduce the correct mucosa color in case of AVSPI that has lost the correct color, therefore, Polarimetric Processing (2) is used.…”

“…The objective of this study is to develop a novel endoscope that can observe the micro-structure of mucosa surface clearly using non-invasive polarimetric imaging. Various polarization techniques have been studied in the field of dermatlogy [1], [2], [3], endoscopy [4], or pathological diagnosis [5], [6], but there is no mention of the above subject. The subtracted polarization technique that has been used for the separation between the superficial and the deeper layer information of translucent medium is newly applied for the contrast enhancement of surface micro-structure.…”

Differentiation of Mueller-matrix invariants of biological tissues fibrillar networks with different phase and amplitude anisotropy

“…To describe interactions of polarized light with these complex systems, more generalized approximations are required, for instance, those based on Mueller-matrix formalism. Nowadays many practical techniques based on the measurement and analyses of Mueller matrices corresponding to the investigated samples are applied in biological and medical researches [1][2][3][4][5]. A separate direction -laser polarimetry -was formed within matrix optics in recent 10-15 years [6][7][8][9][10].…”