Extraction of optical rotation from chiral turbid medium with Mueller matrix decomposition

Abstract

Optical activity is the intrinsic property of chiral molecules. Investigation of optical activity is particularly important for diagnosing and monitoring blood glucose of diabetes. The experimental setup to obtain the Mueller matrix in the forward detection geometry is used. Three kinds of chiral turbid media are selected to be studied in the experiment. The first is the tissue phantom composed of an aqueous solution of glucose mixed with PST sphere suspensions. The second is the actual chicken blood mixed with glucose solution. The last is the vein blood plasma of diabetic patients. The results presented in this study demonstrate that the method of Mueller matrix decomposition can be used to quantitatively extract the optical rotation of chiral molecule in turbid medium. The rotation angle has linear relationship with the concentration of the optical activity material when the scattering coefficient of the turbid medium maintains unchanged. The scattering effect enlarges the rotation angle. Furthermore, optical rotation abides by the Drude’s dispersion equation. The decomposition method also has been found useful applications in quantifying the optical rotations due to blood glucose in diabetic patients. The diabetic severity status can be distinguished with the rotation angle of glucose by using the decomposition method and also are in accordance with the clinical diagnosis. Thus, the method of Mueller matrix decomposition has promising applications in diabetic diagnosis.