Handbook of Biomedical Optics

Polarized Light Imaging of Biological Tissues 659

In this section, the relative roles of birefringence and scatter-

ing in causing depolarization are discussed. e eect of birefrin-

gence occurs as light passes through oriented bers. e eect of

scattering occurs when the direction of the photon is redirected.

30.3.3 Depolarization by Birefringence

Many tissues, like skin or muscle, have birefringent bers, such

as collagen and actin-myosin bers. If one observes such tis-

sues through a polarizing microscope, there are microdomains

of 10–100 m size within which a group of bers are oriented

in the same direction (Jacques et al. 2001