Contrast mechanisms in polarization-sensitive Mueller-matrix optical coherence tomography and application in burn imaging
Abstract
We investigate the various contrast mechanisms provided by polarization-sensitive (PS) Mueller-matrix optical coherence tomography (OCT). Our PS multichannel Mueller-matrix OCT is the first, to our knowledge, to offer simultaneously comprehensive polarization-contrast mechanisms, including the amplitude of birefringence, the orientation of birefringence, and the diattenuation in addition to the polarization-independent intensity contrast, all of which can be extracted from the measured Jones or the equivalent Mueller matrix. Theoretical analysis shows that when diattenuation is negligible, the round-trip Jones matrix represents a linear retarder, which is the foundation of conventional PS-OCT, and can be calculated with a single incident polarization state, although the one-way Jones matrix generally represents an elliptical retarder; otherwise, two incident polarization states are needed. The experimental results obtained from rat skin samples, which conform well with the histology, show that Mueller OCT provides complementary structural and functional information on biological samples and reveal that polarization contrast is more sensitive to thermal degeneration of biological tissue than amplitude-based contrast. Thus, Mueller OCT has significant potential for application in the noninvasive assessment of burn depth.
Additional Information
© 2003 Optical Society of America. Received 18 January 2003; revised manuscript received 28 May 2003. We thank G. Ku for help in preparing samples. This project was sponsored in part by the National Institutes of Health, grants R21 RR15368 and R01 EB000712; by the National Science Foundation, grant BES-9734491; and by the Texas Higher education Coordinating Board, grant 000512-0063-2001.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 73878
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170131-103138593
- NIH
- R21 RR15368
- NIH
- R01 EB000712
- Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
- 000512-0063-2001
- Created
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2017-01-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field