Mueller Matrix has the potential to extract vital information regarding subtle morphological changes that appear in human tissue in the early stages of cancer. In this report we have analyzed data of Muller Matrix imaging obtained from human cervical tissue. The depolarization power quantifies the increase in density of cells in epithelium layer during the progress of dysplasia. The early changes in dysplasia seen in the breakdown of ordered collagen fiber of the stromal region result in changes in birefringence property. The retardance parameter of Mueller Matrix decomposition displays these changes quantitatively. Analysis of retardance images performed on measurements obtained from the stromal region shows significant differences to discriminate dysplasia from normal tissue, where histopathology fails to diagnose. Further, the covariance map of depolarization power and their highest eigenvector from the epithelial layer are able to grade the two different stages of dysplastic conditions, grade I (GD1) and grade II (GD2) in human cervical tissue. This study can improve sensitivity of detection in clinics as a supplementary technique to histopathology.

Date Published: 12 August 2011
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8173, Photonics 2010: Tenth International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics, 817305 (12 August 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.898533

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8173:
Photonics 2010: Tenth International Conference on Fiber Optics and Photonics
Sunil K. Khijwania; Banshi D. Gupta; Bishnu P. Pal; Anurag Sharma, Editor(s)