Transmission of polarized light in skeletal muscle

Experiments were conducted to study polarized light transmission in fresh bovine skeletal muscle of varying thicknesses. Two-dimensional polarization-sensitive transmission images were acquired and analyzed using a numerical parametric fitting algorithm. The total transmittance intensity and degree-of-polarization were calculated for both central ballistic and surrounding scattering regions. Full Mueller matrix images were derived from the raw polarization images and the polar decomposition algorithm was applied to extract polarization parameters. The results suggest that polarized light propagation through skeletal muscle is affected by strong birefringence, diattenuation, multiple scattering induced depolarization and the sarcomere diffraction effect. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3536512]