中文摘要：

偏振光成像是一种非标记、无损伤检测技术,它与现有非偏振光学方法硬件兼容,但能提供更丰富的样品结构和光学信息,并且对亚波长微观结构变化十分敏感.最近,偏振光成像方法在生物医学,特别是肿瘤癌症检测领域显示出很好的应用前景.本文介绍了常用的偏振光散射成像方法,包括偏振差、偏振度、旋转线偏振成像、偏振显微、穆勒矩阵成像等,并展示这些偏振方法在生物医学领域,特别是癌症检测方面的最新研究进展.目前偏振差、偏振度等成像方法已被初步用于皮肤癌的诊断,而穆勒矩阵包含更为丰富的组织微观结构信息,因而具有更好的诊断应用前景.通过对穆勒矩阵进行分解、变换等处理,可获得具有明确物理意义的成像参数,并发展为针对不同应用的特异性方法.目前,随着新型光源、偏振器件和探测器的出现,特别是数据计算处理能力的急剧提升,偏振成像在数据解释和测量方法方面的研究快速发展,已经在生物医学领域显示出很好的应用前景.

英文摘要：

Polarization imaging techniques are capable of probing the structural and optical properties of anisotropic turbid media.These techniques are compatible in optical layout with the corresponding none polarized optical techniques,but can provide far richer micro structural information of the complex samples,especially the structures in the sub-wavelength scale.As a label-free,non-destructive method,polarization imaging has shown many potential applications in biomedical studies and clinical practices.In this paper,we present a brief introduction on different existing polarization imaging techniques including the difference polarization（DP）,degree of polarization（DOP）,rotating linear polarization imaging（RLPI）,polarization microscopy and Mueller matrix imaging.Moreover,we summarize the recent progresses of these polarization imaging techniques being applied in biomedical studies and clinical practices,such as detection and diagnosis of different cancers.The Mueller matrix provides the comprehensive representation of the polarization properties which are closely linked to the micro structure of the tissues.We present the recent studies in Mueller matrix polar decomposition（MMPD）and Mueller matrix transformation（MMT） to extract from the Mueller matrix elements groups of new polarization parameters with clearer physics meanings or more explicit connections to the structural features.The MMPD parameters,which reflect the depolarization,retardance and diattenuation properties of samples,and the MMT parameters,which are closely related to the anisotropy and density of sub wavelength small scatterers,are applied to characterize the distinctive features of human skin basal carcinoma,papillary thyroid carcinoma and cervix cancer in clinical samples.With the rapid technological advances in the light sources,polarization modulation optics,detectors and processors,polarization imaging devices are likely to be made smaller,faster,cheaper and easier to operate,which will open up new frontiers in biomedical stu