Optical systems have shown their potential in non-invasive medical diagnostics over the last years. While most imaging systems use information on wavelength or phase, e.g. OCT, in our approach we focus on the polarization properties of biotissue. We designed a Mueller matrix (MM) measurement setup for in vivo investigations on skin tissue. The MM describes the polarization-changing properties of a sample.. Thus, it is possible to calculate the MM from images taken with different polarization states of the illuminating and the observed light. For medical application, an important requirement is that the process is fast to enable in vivo measurement, avoid motion artifacts, and reduce stress for patients. In our setup, we use a combination of two polarizers and four liquid crystal retarders to quickly change between polarization states. The system is able to measure the location dependent MM of a target for different wavelengths. It is designed for measurement in reflection mode, however, upon simple modifications, it can be used in transmission mode as well. One interesting field of application is diagnostics for inflammatory skin diseases. Here, for example, changes in the structure and concentration of collagen could provide diagnostically valuable information. We evaluated our system on different skin phantoms to investigate the diagnostic advantages compared to standard approaches. In the future, our system could be part of a non-contact dermatoscopic device and provide extra information for the physician.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.