Reliability investigation of Mueller matrix imaging polarimeter in identifying cervical intraepithelial neoplasia

As a serious threat to women's lives and health, cervical cancer ranks second only to breast cancer in the incidence rate and mortality rate among female tumors in the world. Early diagnosis and treatment could be conducive to improving patients' survival activity index. Mueller matrix imaging polarimeter can detect the full polarization characteristics of a sample, and has shown an optimistic prospect in diagnosing various diseases. By analyzing the polarization parameters related to scattering and optical anisotropic properties of samples, detailed microstructure information can be obtained. In this paper, an in-house high-precision Mueller matrix imaging polarimeter with an objective lens NA of 0.40 was used to detect dewaxed, unstained, and unsealed cervical pathological sections, including 325 cases of CIN 1, CIN 2, CIN 3, and normal cervical tissues respectively. The Mueller matrix polar decomposition parameters, including depolarization, retardance, and diattenuation of different degrees of cervical tissues are derived. The relationship between the structure and polarization characteristics of different lesions was analyzed. Furthermore, by utilizing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, the optimal diagnostic threshold, specificity and sensitivity are calculated. Simultaneously, the diagnostic reliability of the MMIP with different polarization parameters among normal, CIN 1, CIN-2, and CIN-3 cervical tissue sections is demonstrated at about 82.8%-99.8%. This study proves the reliability and effectiveness of the self-developed MMIP in the detection of cervical tissue sections and is expected to become a powerful tool to assist doctors in pathological diagnosis.