title: Characterizing the microstructures of biological tissues using Mueller matrix and transformed polarization parameters.
abstract: Mueller matrices can be used as a powerful tool to probe qualitatively the microstructures of biological tissues. Certain transformation processes can provide new sets of parameters which are functions of the Mueller matrix elements but represent more explicitly the characteristic features of the sample. In this paper, we take the backscattering Mueller matrices of a group of tissues with distinctive structural properties. Using both experiments and Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate qualitatively the characteristic features of Mueller matrices corresponding to different structural and optical properties. We also calculate two sets of transformed polarization parameters using the Mueller matrix transformation (MMT) and Mueller matrix polar decomposition (MMPD) techniques. We demonstrate that the new parameters can separate the effects due to sample orientation and present quantitatively certain characteristic features of these tissues. Finally, we apply the transformed polarization parameters to the unstained human cervix cancerous tissues. Preliminary results show that the transformed polarization parameters can provide characteristic information to distinguish the cancerous and healthy tissues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ; Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Minghao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Honghui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ; Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ; Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Yihong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Sixth People's Hospital (Nanshan Hospital) Huazhong University of Science and Technology Union Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen 518052, China.
authors.forename: Shaoxiong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Yonghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ; Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Minimal Invasive Medical Technologies, Institute of Optical Imaging and Sensing, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ma
keywords: (110.5405) Polarimetric imaging; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (290.5855) Scattering, polarization