Helicity of circular polarized light backscattered from biological tissues influenced by optical clearing

摘要

An increasingly popular area of interest in biomedical diagnostics is the high sensitivity of scattered polarized light to subtle alterations in tissue morphology. Insight in to these interactions has lead to the development of real time non-invasive diagnostic and therapy methods, and will continue to do so, improving both the detection of diseases, and treatment responses in early stages. Here, the fundamental properties of circular polarized light, and its application to observe morphologic changes in biological tissues has been studied. The optical properties of biological tissues have been altered with the use of optical clearing agents and the polarization state of their scattered light analyzed. Following these observations, research into the feasibility of distinguishing changes in optical parameters of the media has been carried out. The results showed that using the specific polarimetry system, alterations to the phantom medium and biological tissues were resolvable, furthermore a particular dependence on the anisotropy of the scattering medium was found. This method provides a good foundation for future work implementing non-invasive diagnostic techniques for early disease detection, as many forms of cancerous growths alter the scattering anisotropy of the affected tissue.