Polarization and depolarization metrics as optical markers in support to histopathology of ex vivo colon tissue

Tissue polarimetry holds great promise to improve the effectiveness of conventional cancer diagnostics and staging, being a fast, minimally invasive, low-cost optical technique. We introduce an enhanced diagnostic method for ex vivo colon specimens assessment by utilizing Stokes Mueller matrix polarimetry. The proposed makes use experimental matrices, measured from healthy tumor zones specimen, as input data post-processing algorithms that include physical realisability filtering, symmetric decomposition estimation various polarization depolarization metrics specimen diagnostics. validated our results with gold standard histological provided pathologists. It was found Stokes-Mueller polarimetry, combined appropriate polarization/depolarization calculations provides relevant markers tissue pathological conditions (healthy versus cancer), confirmed histopathology analysis. This approach potentially physicians valuable complementary information promises in helping specimens.