Abstract
We present a new way to extract characteristic features of the Mueller matrix images based on their frequency distributions and the central moments. We take the backscattering Mueller matrices of tissues with distinctive microstructures, and then analyze the frequency distribution histograms (FDHs) of all the matrix elements. For anisotropic skeletal muscle and isotropic liver tissues, we find that the shapes of the FDHs and their central moment parameters, i.e., variance, skewness, and kurtosis, are not sensitive to the sample orientation. Comparisons among different tissues further indicate that the frequency distributions of Mueller matrix elements and their corresponding central moments can be used as indicators for the characteristic microstructural features of tissues. A preliminary application to human cervical cancerous tissues shows that the distribution curves and central moment parameters may have the potential to give quantitative criteria for cancerous tissues detections.
Highlights
IntroductionPolarization imaging can provide rich microstructural and optical information of tissues for diagnostic purposes.[1,2,3,4,5] Since a Mueller matrix provides the most comprehensive characterization of the polarization features,[6] it has been applied to differentiate various abnormal tissues, such as skin cancer,[7] cervical cancer,[8,9,10] colon cancer,[11,12,13] liver fibrosis,[14] and so on.[15,16,17,18] For anisotropic tissues, previous studies have shown that the Mueller matrix elements may change significantly with the orientation of the sample, making quantitative characterization of the microstructural features very difficult.[19,20] It was pointed out that the structural information encoded in a Mueller matrix can be presented by other transformed parameters with more explicit physics meanings.[10]
We present a new way based on the statistical method to transform the 2-D images of the Mueller matrix elements into frequency distribution histogram (FDH), and central moment parameters
We have summarized the characteristic features of anisotropic and isotropic tissues using Figs. 4, 5 and Tables 1, 2
Summary
Polarization imaging can provide rich microstructural and optical information of tissues for diagnostic purposes.[1,2,3,4,5] Since a Mueller matrix provides the most comprehensive characterization of the polarization features,[6] it has been applied to differentiate various abnormal tissues, such as skin cancer,[7] cervical cancer,[8,9,10] colon cancer,[11,12,13] liver fibrosis,[14] and so on.[15,16,17,18] For anisotropic tissues, previous studies have shown that the Mueller matrix elements may change significantly with the orientation of the sample, making quantitative characterization of the microstructural features very difficult.[19,20] It was pointed out that the structural information encoded in a Mueller matrix can be presented by other transformed parameters with more explicit physics meanings.[10]. The two-dimensional (2-D) images of Mueller matrix elements can be reduced into a group of quantitative or semiquantitative, orientation insensitive parameters that reveal clearly the key structural features of the samples
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