Anomalous behavior of depolarization of light in a turbid medium

Abstract Depolarization of polarized light transmitting through a turbid medium is known to decrease with increasing value of anisotropy parameter g of the medium. We have observed that for turbid media comprised of scatterers having size parameter ( X ) and relative refractive index ratio ( m ) in the range [ 0.05 ⩽ ( m − 1 ) X ⩽ 2.5 ], although for a given value of X , a decrease in the value of m leads to higher g , depolarization also increases. This anomalous behavior arises because the depolarization characteristics of anisotropic scattering media ( g ⩾ 0.7 ) comprised of low refractive index scatterers [ ( m − 1 ) ≪ 1 , ( m − 1 ) X ≪ 1 ] are much similar to that for Rayleigh scatterers.

[1]  D. Côté,et al.  Robust concentration determination of optically active molecules in turbid media with validated three-dimensional polarization sensitive Monte Carlo calculations. , 2005, Optics express.

[2]  S. Majumder,et al.  Fluorescence depolarization in a scattering medium: effect of size parameter of a scatterer. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[3]  Z. Kam,et al.  Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles , 1998 .

[4]  J. Walsh,et al.  Polarization discrimination of coherently propagating light in turbid media. , 1999, Applied optics.

[5]  Lagendijk,et al.  Observation of weak localization of light in a finite slab: Anisotropy effects and light path classification. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[6]  Gang Yao,et al.  Monte Carlo model and single-scattering approximation of the propagation of polarized light in turbid media containing glucose. , 2002, Applied optics.

[7]  H. S. Patel,et al.  Depolarization of light in tissue phantoms – effect of collection geometry , 2003 .

[8]  M. Moscoso,et al.  Influence of the relative refractive index on the depolarization of multiply scattered waves. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[9]  Jessica Ramella-Roman,et al.  Three Monte Carlo programs of polarized light transport into scattering media: part I. , 2005, Optics express.

[10]  Asima Pradhan,et al.  Depolarization of light in a multiply scattering medium: effect of the refractive index of a scatterer. , 2004, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[11]  Lihong V. Wang,et al.  Propagation of polarized light in birefringent turbid media: a Monte Carlo study. , 2002, Journal of biomedical optics.

[12]  I. Alex Vitkin,et al.  Polarization studies in multiply scattering chiral media , 2000 .

[13]  J. Walsh,et al.  Comparative study of polarized light propagation in biologic tissues. , 2002, Journal of biomedical optics.

[14]  Dmitry A. Zimnyakov,et al.  Residual polarization of non-coherently backscattered linearly polarized light: the influence of the anisotropy parameter of the scattering medium , 2001 .

[15]  Larry D. Travis,et al.  Light Scattering by Nonspherical Particles , 1998 .

[16]  J. Walsh,et al.  Polarized light propagation through tissue phantoms containing densely packed scatterers. , 2000, Optics letters.

[17]  Schmitt,et al.  Depolarization of multiply scattered waves by spherical diffusers: Influence of the size parameter. , 1994, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[18]  S. Schilders,et al.  Effect of scatterer size on microscopic imaging through turbid media based on differential polarisation-gating , 1998 .

[19]  A Dogariu,et al.  Time-domain depolarization of waves retroreflected from dense colloidal media. , 1997, Optics letters.

[20]  Ralf Lenke,et al.  Depolarization of backscattered linearly polarized light. , 2004, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[21]  S Morgan,et al.  Polarization properties of light backscattered from a two layer scattering medium. , 2000, Optics express.

[22]  N. Ghosh,et al.  Depolarization of light in tissue phantoms - effect of a distribution in the size of scatterers. , 2003, Optics express.

[23]  D. Weitz,et al.  Diffusing wave spectroscopy. , 1988, Physical review letters.

[24]  Jessica C Ramella-Roman,et al.  Imaging skin pathology with polarized light. , 2002, Journal of biomedical optics.

[25]  I Alex Vitkin,et al.  Optical rotation and linear and circular depolarization rates in diffusively scattered light from chiral, racemic, and achiral turbid media. , 2002, Journal of biomedical optics.

[26]  I. Vitkin,et al.  Effects of molecular asymmetry of optically active molecules on the polarization properties of multiply scattered light. , 2002, Optics express.

[27]  D. B. Rogozkin,et al.  Diffusion of circularly polarized light in a disordered medium with large-scale inhomogeneities , 1998 .

[28]  J. Schmitt,et al.  Use of polarized light to discriminate short-path photons in a multiply scattering medium. , 1992, Applied optics.