Complementary analysis of Mueller-matrix images of optically anisotropic highly scattering biological tissues

Abstract

Background: Using optical techniques for tissue diagnostics (so-called ‘optical biopsy’) has been a subject of extensive research for many years. Various groups have been exploring different spectral and/or imaging modalities (e.g. diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, autofluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT), polarized light microscopy, etc.) for biomedical applications. In this paper, we report on using multi-wavelength imaging Mueller polarimetry combined with an appropriated image post-processing for the detection of tissue malignancy. Methods: We investigate a possibility of complementary analysis of Mueller matrix images obtained for turbid tissue-like scattering phantoms and excised human normal and cancerous colorectal tissue samples embedded in paraffin. Combined application of correlation, fractal and statistical analysis was employed to assess quantitatively the polarization-inhomogeneous scattered fields observed at the surface of tissue samples. Results: The combined analysis of the polarimetric images of paraffin-embedded tissue blocks has proved to be an efficient tool for the unambiguous detection of tissue malignant transformation. A fractal structure was clearly observed at spatial distributions of depolarization of light scattered in healthy tissues in a visible range of spectrum, while corresponding distributions for cancerous tissues did not show such dependence. We demonstrate that paraffin does not destroy a fractal structure of spatial distribution of depolarization. Thus, the loss of fractality in spatial distributions of depolarization for cancerous tissue is related to the structural changes in the tissue sample induced by cancer itself and, therefore, may serve as a marker of the disease. Conclusion: The obtained results emphasize that a combined use of statistical, correlation and fractal analysis for the Mueller-matrix image post-processing is an effective approach for an assessment of variations of optical properties in turbid tissue-like scattering media and biological tissues, with a high potential to be transferred to clinical practice for screening cancerous tissue samples.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41476-018-0085-9
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences
Funding Information: Authors acknowledge financial support of the international program of Ecole polytechnique “Campagne de chercheurs invités 2015-2016, 2016-2017”, and Academy of Finland (grant projects: 314369 and 290596). MB and MP would like to express sincere thanks to
Additional Information: © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Correlation and fractal image analysis,Mueller matrix,Multiple scattering,Optical anisotropy,Polarimetry,Statistical,Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Publication ISSN: 1990-2573
Last Modified: 26 Mar 2024 08:13
Date Deposited: 15 Jul 2019 08:42
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://jeos.sp ... 1476-018-0085-9 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-08-17
Accepted Date: 2018-06-04
Authors: Borovkova, Mariia
Peyvasteh, Motahareh
Dubolazov, Olexander
Ushenko, Yurii
Ushenko, Volodymyr
Bykov, Alexander
Deby, Stanislas
Rehbinder, Jean
Novikova, Tatiana
Meglinski, Igor (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-7613-8191)

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