Polarimetric Detection of Chemotherapy-Induced Cancer Cell Death

Imaging polarimetry is a focus of increasing interest in diagnostic medicine because of its non-destructive nature and its potential to distinguish normal from tumor tissue. However, handling and understanding polarimetric images is not an easy task, and different intermediate steps have been proposed in order to introduce helpful physical magnitudes. In this research, we look for a sensitive polarimetric parameter that allows us to detect cell death when cancer cells are treated with chemotherapy drugs. Experiments in two different myelomonocytic leukemia cell lines, U937 and THP1, are performed in triplicate, finding a highly-significant positive correlation between total diattenuation of samples in transmission configuration, , and chemotherapy-induced cell death. The location of the diattenuation enhancement gives some insight into the cell death process. The proposed method can be an objective complement to conventional methodologies based on pure observational microscopy and can be easily implemented in regular microscopes.