Comparative study of influence of imaging resolution on Mueller matrix derived parameters

Abstract

Mueller matrix polarimetry has been applied to assist the diagnosis of several different types of diseases. The improvement of imaging resolution using objective with high numerical aperture (NA) is important for traditional optical microscope. However, imaging using a high NA objective entails a problem, namely, the field of view (FOV) is smaller and imaging speed is slower. Our previous work found that when using Mueller matrix microscope to obtain the structural features of tissue samples, some information of anisotropic structures, such as the density and orientation distribution of fibers can be revealed by polarization parameters images with relatively low resolution. In this study, we use objectives with different numerical aperture to measure the microscopic Mueller matrix of human healthy breast duct tissues and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) tissues, which have distinct typical fibrous structures. Then a group of image texture feature parameters of Mueller matrix derived parameters images under high and low imaging resolutions are quantitatively compared. The results demonstrate that with the decline of imaging resolution, the fibers density information contained in the texture features of linear retardance δ parameter image are preserved well. While for the azimuthal orientation parameter θ which is closely related to the spatial location, the high imaging resolution to obtain quantitative structural information is still needed. The study provides an important criterion to decide which information of fibrous structures can be extracted accurately using transmission Mueller matrix microscope with low numerical aperture objectives to assist diagnose clinically such as breast ductal carcinoma.