Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography of melanin provides tissue inherent contrast based on depolarization

Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) was used to investigate the polarization properties of melanin. Measurements in samples with varying melanin concentrations revealed polarization scrambling, i.e. depolarization. The results indicate that the depolarizing appearance of pig...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Baumann, Bernhard (Contributor), Baumann, Stefan O. (Author), Konegger, Thomas (Author), Pircher, Michael (Author), Götzinger, Erich (Author), Sattmann, Harald (Author), Litschauer, Marco (Author), Hitzenberger, Christoph K. (Author)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, 2010-08-26T16:00:27Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
Description
Summary:Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) was used to investigate the polarization properties of melanin. Measurements in samples with varying melanin concentrations revealed polarization scrambling, i.e. depolarization. The results indicate that the depolarizing appearance of pigmented structures like, for instance, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is likely to be caused by the melanin granules contained in these cells.
Austrian Science Fund (FWF grants P19624-B02 and P19751-N20)