Birefringence imaging of human skin by polarization-sensitive spectral interferometric optical coherence tomography

We have developed a spectral interferometric optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with polarization sensitivity that is able to measure a two-dimensional tomographic image by means of one-dimensional mechanical scanning. Our system, which has an axial resolution of 32 mum, calculates the distribution of each element of the Muller matrix of a measured object from 16 OCT images. The OCT system successfully reveals the birefringent nature of human skin tissue. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.