Birefringence imaging of human skin by polarization-sensitive spectral interferometric optical coherence tomography

Opt Lett. 2002;27(20):1803-5. doi: 10.1364/ol.27.001803.

Abstract

We have developed a spectral interferometric optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with polarization sensitivity that is able to measure a two-dimensional tomographic image by means of one-dimensional mechanical scanning. Our system, which has an axial resolution of 32 mum , calculates the distribution of each element of the Müller matrix of a measured object from 16 OCT images. The OCT system successfully reveals the birefringent nature of human skin tissue.