Polarization characterization of biological tissues using Stokes vector decomposition

A method is proposed for characterizing the polarization properties of a depolarizing anisotropic medium based on decomposition of the Stokes vector representing the light emerging from the medium. The exiting Stokes vector can be considered as being decomposed into two parts, namely a completely unpolarized and a completely polarized part. Then, the Mueller matrix representing the sample can be extracted as a superposition of two distinguishable parts. The differential Mueller formalism is applied to one part of the Muller matrix. Here, explicit expressions are presented for the extraction of polarization properties of the medium. Results indicate that the proposed method is a promising method for characterization of complicated media such as biological tissues.