MUELLER MATRIX APPLIED TO DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF BIO-MEDICAL MATERIALS POSSESSING CHIRALITY

摘要

All sixteen Mueller Matrix elements of Bio-Medical Materials measured by an optical polarimetric scatterometer are examined to develop discrimination algorithms. Special attention was given to the eight quasi off diagonal scattering elements of the Mueller Matrix in order to examine the feasibility of bio-medical identification. Since bio-medical materials possess some degree of chirality, the specific impact of chirality on the Mueller Matrix elements is analyzed extensively. It is shown that (to within first order in chirality) only the eight quasi off diagonal elements of the Mueller Matrix are effected by the chiral property of the bio-medical materials. This reinforces the experimental observations from previous scattering experiments that the quasi off diagonal Mueller Matrix elements could provide a basis for bio-medical detection and identification. The analysis provides the specific relationship between the quasi off diagonal elements and the degree of chirality of the bio-medical materials, in order to determine whether the chiral effects are sufficiently large to provide the accuracy necessary to conduct species-level discrimination in the presence of spurious (noise) contributions due to surface roughness, etc. The specific dependence of scattering due to chirality upon frequency and angle of incidence is also determined.