Abstract

Polarization is a fundamental property of light. In recent years, polarization techniques and methods have emerged as a promising way to improve biomedical image contrast and reveal tissue microstructural information. The Mueller matrix is a comprehensive description of the polarization characteristics of a complex specimen, and has been applied in many biomedical sensory and diagnostic contexts. Focusing on a combination of Mueller matrix imaging and tissue optical clearing, this chapter firstly introduces the Stokes-Mueller formulism, the Mueller matrix imaging principle, and the feature extraction method. Then some recent breakthroughs in the use of Mueller matrix imaging in recording the optical clearing process are reviewed, including the qualitative observation of Mueller matrix images and the quantitative analysis of parameters extracted from polarization images. Finally, to explain the experimental regularity of Mueller matrix images during tissue optical clearing, a polarization-sensitive Monte Carlo simulation program and tissue models considering various mechanisms are employed to mimic the process of tissue optical clearing, verified by the comparison between experiments and simulations.