Enhanced confocal microscopy and ophthalmoscopy with polarization imaging

We previously developed a Mueller matrix formalism to improve confocal imaging in microscopes and ophthalmoscopes. Here we describe a procedure simplified by firstly introducing a generator of polarization states in the illumination pathway of a confocal scanning laser microscope and secondly computing just four elements of the Mueller matrix of any sample and instrument combination. Using a subset of Mueller matrix elements, the best images are reconstructed. The method was tested for samples with differing properties (specular, diffuse and partially depolarizing). Images were also studied of features at the rear of the eye. The best images obtained with this technique were compared to the original images and those obtained from frame averaging. Images corresponding to non-polarized incident light were also computed. For all cases, the best reconstructed images were of better quality than both the original and frame-averaged images. The best reconstructed images also showed an improvement compared with the images corresponding to non polarized light. This methodology will have broad application in biomedical imaging.

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