CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF MUELLER MATRIX PATTERNS FOR POLARIZATION SCATTERING MODEL OF BIOLOGICAL TISSUES

We developed a model to describe polarized photon scattering in biological tissues.In this model,tissues are simplified to a mixture of scatterers and surrounding mpdium.There are t wo types ofscatterers in the model:solid spheres and infinitely long solid cylinders.Variables related to thescatterers include:the densities and sizes of the spheres and cylinders,the orientation and angulardistribution of cylinders.Variables related to the surrounding medium include:the refractiveindex,absorption coeficient and birefringence.In this paper,as a development we introduce anoptical activity effct to the model.By comparing experiments and Monte Carlo simulations,we analyze the backscater ing Mueller matrix patterms of several tissue-like media,and summarizethe different effects coming from anisotropic scattering and optical properties.In addition,wepropose a possible method to extract the optical activity values for tissues.Both the experimentaland simulated results show that,by analyzing the Mueller matrix patterns,the microstructureand optical properties of the medium can be obtained.The characteristic features of Muellermatrix patterns are potentilly powerful tools for studying the contrast mechanisms of polari-zation imaging for medical diagnosis.

QUANTITATIVE MUELLER MATRIX POLARIMETRY TECHNIQUES FOR BIOLOGICAL TISSUES

We propose and conduct both the rotating linear polarization imaging(RLPI)and Mueller matrix transformation(MMT)measurements of different biological tissue samples,and testify the capability of the Mueller matrix polarimetry for the anisotropic scattering media.The independent parameters extracted from the RLPI and MMT techniques are compared and analyzed.The tissue experimental results show that the parameters are closely related to the structural characteristics of the turbid scattering media,including the sizes of the scatterers,the angular distribution and order of alignment of thefibers.The results and conclusions in this paper may provide a potential method for the detection of precancerous and early stage cancerous tissues.Also,such studies represent the Mueller matrix transformation procedure which results in a set of parameters linking up the Mueller matrix elements to the structural and optical properties of the media.

A STUDY ON PENETRATION DEPTH OF POLARIZATION IMAGING

Optical clearing improves the penetration depth of optical measurements in turbid tissues.Polarization imaging has been demonstrated as a potentially promising tool for detecting cancers in superficial tissues,but its limited depth of detection is a major obstacle to the effective application in clinical diagnosis.In the present paper,detection depths of two polarization imaging methods,i.e.,rotating linear polarization imaging(RLPI)and degree of polarization imaging(DOPI),are examined quantitatively using both experiments and Monte Carlo simulations.The results show that the contrast curves of RLPI and DOPI are different.The characteristic depth of DOPI scales with transport mean free path length,and that of RLPI increases slightly with g.Both characteristic depths of RLPI and DOPI are on the order of transport mean free path length and the former is almost twice as large as the latter.It is expected that they should have different response to optical clearing process in tissues.

Influence of absorption in linear polarization imaging of melanoma tissues

The contrast mechanism of different polarization imaging techniques for melanoma in mouse skin is st udied using both experiments and Monte Carlo simulations.Total intensity,linear polariz-ation diference imaging(DPI),degree of polarization imaging(DOPI)and'rotating linearpolarization imaging(RLPl)are applied and the relative contrasts of these polarization imagingmethods between the normal and cancerous tissues are compared.A two-layer absorption-scat-tering model is proposed to explain the contrast mechanism of the polarization imaging formelanoma.By taking into account of both scattering of symmetrical and asymmetrical scat terersand absorption of inter-scatterer medium,the two-layer model reproduces the relative con trastsfor polarization images observed in experiments.The simulation results also show that,theparameters of polarization imaging change more dramatically with the variation of absorption inthe bottom layer than the top layer.

POLARIZATION IMAGING AND SCATTERING MODEL OF CANCEROUS LIVER TISSUES

We apply diferent polarization imaging techniques for cancerous liver tissues,and compare the relative contrasts for difference polarization imaging(DPI),degree of polarization imaging(DOPI)and rotating linear polarization imaging(RLPI).Experimental results show that a number of polarization imaging parameters are capable of differentiating cancerous cells in isotropic liver tisues.To analyze the contrast mechanism of the cancer:-sensitive polarization imaging parameters,we propose a scattering model cont aining two types of spherical scatterers and carry on Monte Carlo simula tions based on this bi-component model.Both the experimental and Monte Carlo simulated results show that the RLPI technique can provide a good imaging contrast of cancerous tissues.The bi-component scattering model provides a useful tool to ana-lyze the contrast mechanism of polarization imaging of cancerous tissues.

Nail Selenium Level and Diabetes in Older People in Rural China

This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the association between selenium levels and diabetes in an older population with life-long natural exposure to selenium in rural China. A total of 1856 subjects aged 65 years or older from four Chinese rural counties with different environmental selenium levels were evaluated. Analysis of covariance models and logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between nail selenium levels and serum glucose, serum insulin, insulin resistance [using the Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance （HOMA-IR）], and the risk of diabetes. The mean nail selenium level was 0.461μg/g and the prevalence rate of diabetes was 8.3% in this population. The mean nail selenium level was significantly higher in the group with diabetes than in the group without diabetes （P〈0.0001）. The adjusted odds ratios for diabetes were 2.65 （95% Cl： 1.48 to 4.73）, 2.47 （95% CI： 1.37 to 4.45）, and 3.30 （95% Cl： 1.85 to 5.88） from the second selenium quartile to the fourth quartile, respectively, compared with the first quartile group. The mean serum glucose and HOMA-IR in the higher selenium quartile groups were significantly higher than those of the lowest quartile group. However, no significant differences in insulin were observed among the four quartile groups. A long-term, higher level of exposure to selenium may be associated with a higher risk of diabetes. Future studies are needed to elucidate the association between selenium and insulin resistance.

Grazing incidence polarized light imaging of footwear prints

Footwear prints are important evidence in criminal investigation. They represent changes in the surface morphology due to disturbance to fine particle distributions. Existing non-contact optical detection methods usually measure the light intensity contrasts between the footwear prints and the ground, which can be enhanced by grazing incident illumination. We take polari-zation images of footwear prints on different types of floors using a commercial single lens reflex color camera. Results show that adding linear polarizers in front of the camera lens and light source improves the contrast of footwear print images. The best contrasts are achieved in degree of linear polarization. In addition, the three-color channels of the camera can be used to examine the spectral features of the polarization images. According to the experimental results, the best contrast is obtained at the blue channel. The current work shows that grazing incidence polarized light imaging can effectively enhance the contrast of the footwear prints against the floors, which would help obtain footwear evidence in criminal investigation.