Towards skin polarization characterization using polarimetric technique.

Measurement of optical properties of skin is an expanding and growing field of research. Recent studies have shown that the biological tissue, especially skin, changes the polarization state of the incident light. Using this property will enable the study of abnormalities and diseases that alter not only the light intensity but also its polarization state. In this paper we report an experimental study for measuring changes of polarization state of the light scattered from a phantom similar to a sample model of scattering skin. Using the notation of Stokes vector for the polarized light and Mueller matrix for the sample with its polarization properties, we have shown that some elements of the matrix were particularly sensitive to the changes of the polarization-altering physical properties of the scatterers within the phantom.