Polarimetric optical scanning microscopy of zebrafish embryonic development using the coherency matrix

Abstract

Many of the most important resolution improvements in optical microscopy techniques are based on the reduction of scattering effects. The main benefit of polarimetry‐based imaging to this end is the discrimination between scattering phenomena originating from complex systems and the experimental noise. The determination of the coherency matrix elements from the experimental Mueller matrix can take advantage of scattering measurements to obtain additional information on the structural organization of a sample. We analyze the contrast mechanisms extracted from (a) the coherency matrix elements, (b) its eigenvalues and (c) the indices of polarimetric purity at different stages of zebrafish embryos, based on previous work using Mueller matrix optical scanning microscopy. We show that the use of the coherency matrix and related decompositions leads to an improvement in the imaging contrast, without requiring any complicated algebraic operations or any a priori knowledge of the sample, in contrast to standard polarimetric methods.

Characterization of the Mueller Matrix: Purity Space and Reflectance Imaging

“…Depolarization has been found to be a useful contrast mechanism in imaging [4,13,88]. A full description of depolarization requires three parameters, so the degree of polarimetric purity P ∆ , or the depolarization power, ∆, while giving averaged measures of depolarization, do not give full details.…”

“…There is growing interest in polarization imaging in optical systems such as microscopes, as polarization is a powerful contrast mechanism. Often these systems have a reflectance geometry and include methods such as reflectometry [1], reflectance microscopy [2][3][4], confocal microscopy [5,6], low-coherence interferometry [7], and optical coherence tomography [8][9][10]. Depolarization has been found to be a useful contrast mechanism in biological and medical imaging [5,[11][12][13].…”