Characterization of tissue texture with Mueller matrix parameters

Abstract

Polarization is a fundamental property of light and a powerful sensing tool, and it has been applied to the detection of biological tissues. Parameters from the Mueller matrix polar decomposition (MMPD) method and Mueller matrix transformation (MMT) method are potential mathematical descriptions of the polarization characteristics of scattering media. However, the robustness of the parameters is affected by the complex scattering of polarized light within biological tissues. In this work, we conducted comparations and analyses of the image textures of these parameters, and the results indicate that not all parameters from MMPD and MMT methods can distinguish the textural features of different types of scatterers in tendon tissue. Spherical scatterer regions exhibit more obvious textural properties than cylindrical scatterers regions. And there exist differences between the value distribution of spherical and cylindrical scatterers regions, which corresponds to different sections at the color bar. This work may provide a reference for the textural characterization of biological tissues with the parameters from MMPD and MMT methods.