Polarimetry is widely known to involve a series of powerful optical techniques that characterize the polarization
behaviour of a sample. In this work, we propose a method for applying polarimetric procedures to the characterization of
biological tissues, in order to differentiate between healthy and pathologic tissues on a polarimetric basis. Usually,
medical morphology diseases are diagnosed based on histological alterations of the tissue. The fact that these alterations
will be reflected in polarization information highlights the suitability of polarimetric procedures for diagnostic purposes.
The analysis is mainly focused on the depolarization properties of the media, as long as the internal structure strongly
affects the polarization state of the light that interacts with the sample. Therefore, a method is developed in order to
determine the correlation between pathological ultraestructural characteristics and the subsequent variations in the
polarimetric parameters of the backscattered light. This study is applied to three samples of porcine skin corresponding
to a healthy region, a mole, and a cancerous region. The results show that the method proposed is indeed an adequate
technique in order to achieve an early, accurate and effective cancer detection.
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