Mueller microscopy for digital pathology

Abstract

<p indent="0mm">Digital pathology enables the process of digitizing the pathological slides with high resolution and takes advantages of computer and data technologies for quantitative analysis and feature recognition of the whole-slide images. It aims at reducing the workload of pathologists and achieving computer-aided pathological diagnosis with improved objectivity and accuracy. Full-polarization microscopy imaging is a rapidly developing technology, which is label-free, non-invasive, and has abundant information on microstructures down to the sub-wavelength scales. Polarization imaging is capable of quantitative characterization of cross-scale microstructual features of complex biomedical samples, observation of dynamic processes <italic>in situ</italic> and <italic>in vivo</italic>, and preliminary diagnosis in clinical pathology. Starting from the concept and method of digital pathology, this paper introduces the polarization imaging methods and prospective research results of digital pathology based on polarization imaging. The purpose is to show the concept, technology, methods and preliminary applications of polarization digital pathology, and looks forward to its potential applications and future direction.