title: Alignment maps of tissues: II. Fast harmonic analysis for imaging.
abstract: A methodology for generating polarized light retardation and alignment direction images is presented. A rotated quarter-wave plate changes the linear polarized light to a polarized probe with various degrees of ellipticity by which samples are imaged with the use of a circular analyzer. A harmonic representation of image intensity allows simple analysis, requiring only simple image operations and realizing four orders-of-magnitude computational savings for strongly aligned tissues, where linear birefringence is the dominant optical property. The method is demonstrated for a porcine heart valve leaflet.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
authors.forename: T T
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Tower
authors.forename: R T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Tranquillo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001718:Birefringence; D002138:Calibration; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006351:Heart Valves / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000166:cytology / Q000648:ultrastructure; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D008859:Microscopy, Polarization / Q000379:methods*; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D013552:Swine