Cancerous and precancerous growths often exhibit changes in scattering, and therefore depolarization, as well as collagen breakdown, causing changes in birefringent effects. Simple difference of linear polarization imaging is unable to represent anisotropic effects like birefringence, and Mueller polarimetry is time-consuming and difficult to implement clinically. This work presents a dual-polarization endoscope to collect co- and cross-polarized images for each of two polarization states, and further incorporates narrow band detection to increase vascular contrast, particularly vascular remodeling present in diseased tissue, and provide depth sensitivity. The endoscope was shown to be sensitive to both isotropic and anisotropic materials in phantom and in vivo experiments.

Date Published: 10 March 2015
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9333, Biomedical Applications of Light Scattering IX, 93330N (10 March 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2079726

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9333:
Biomedical Applications of Light Scattering IX
Adam Wax; Vadim Backman, Editor(s)