  Detection of cervical intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN) at the early stage
enables prevention of cervical cancer, which is one of the leading cause of
cancer deaths among women. Recently there is a great interest to use the
optical polarimetry as a non-invasive diagnosis tool to characterize the
cervical tissues. In this context, it is crucial to validate the performance of
various Mueller matrix decomposition techniques, that are utilized to extract
the intrinsic polarization properties of complex turbid media, such as
biological tissues. The aim of the work is to quantitatively compare the
performance of polar and differential MM decomposition methods for probing the
polarization properties in various complex optical media. Complete polarization
responses of the cervical tissue sections, and other media are recorded by
preparing a home-built Mueller matrix imaging set up with a spatial resolution
of 400 nm. The Mueller matrices are then processed with the polar and
differential decomposition methods to separate, and quantify the individual
polarization parameters. ronounced differences in the extracted polarization
properties are observed for different CIN grades with both the decomposition
methods. Our results indicate that the differential decomposition of MM have
certain advantages over the polar decomposition method to extract the intrinsic
polarization properties of a complex tissue medium. The quantified polarization
parameters obtained through the decomposition methods can be used as useful
metrics to distinguish between the different grades of CIN, and to describe the
healing efficiency of a self-healing organic crystal. Thus the Mueller matrix
polarimetry shows great potential as an label-free, non-invasive diagnostic and
imaging tool with potential applications in biomedical clinical research, and
in various other disciplines.
