Polarization-dependent characteristics and polarization gating in time-resolved optical imaging of skeletal muscle tissues

The comparisons of the time-resolved transmitted intensity profiles and imaging results based on the polarization gating method between the samples of diluted milk, chicken breast tissue, and chopped chicken breast tissue revealed that the anisotropic structure of chicken breast tissue resulted in coherent coupling between the two inherent polarization directions and difficulty of using the polarization gating method for optical imaging through skeletal muscle tissues. To explore the polarization-dependent optical properties of chicken breast tissues, we calibrated the extinction coefficients of the polarization components parallel with and perpendicular to tissue filaments and the cross-polarized intensity-coupling coefficients between the two polarization components, based on the measured snake-photon intensity data. The calibrated values of these coefficients were quite consistent with previously reported. The extinction coefficient in the polarization along tissue filaments was significantly higher than that of the other polarization. Also, the cross-polarized coupling coefficient of the coupling from the polarization of tissue filaments into the other was stronger than that of inverse coupling.