title: Enhancement of hidden structures of early skin fibrosis using polarization degree patterns and Pearson correlation analysis.
abstract: The skin of athymic nude mice is irradiated with a single dose of x-ray irradiation that initiated fibrosis. Digital photographs of the irradiated mice are taken by illuminating the mouse skin with linearly polarized probe light of 650 nm. The specific pattern of the surface distribution of the degree of polarization enables the detection of initial skin fibrosis structures that were not visually apparent. Data processing of the raw spatial distributions of the degree of polarization based on Fourier filtering of the high-frequency noise improves subjective perception of the revealed structure in the images. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis provides information about skin structural size and directionality.
authors.affiliation: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Sviridov
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Chernomordik
authors.forename: Moinuddin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hassan
authors.forename: Albert C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Boccara
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Russo
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Amir
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gandjbakhche
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D005355:Fibrosis; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D008819:Mice, Nude; D008859:Microscopy, Polarization / Q000379:methods*; D011855:Radiodermatitis / Q000473:pathology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014965:X-Rays