title: Comment on "Optical-fiber-based Mueller optical coherence tomography".
abstract: We comment on the recent Letter by Jiao et al. [Opt. Lett. 28, 1206 (2003)] in which a polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography system was presented. Interrogating a sample with two orthogonal incident polarization states cannot always recover birefringence correctly. A previously presented fiber-based polarization-sensitive system was inaccurately characterized, and its method of eliminating the polarization distortion caused by single-mode optical fiber was presented earlier by Saxer et al. [Opt. Lett. 25, 1355 (2000)].
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School & Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, 50 Blossom Street, BAR 7, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA. hylepark@helix.mgh.harvard.edu
authors.forename: B Hyle
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Mark C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Pierce
authors.forename: Johannes F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: de Boer
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005336:Fiber Optic Technology / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D055100:Optical Fibers; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012867:Skin / Q000166:cytology*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*