The use of polarized light for skin cancer detecton

Abstract

Over 50,000 people per year will be diagnosed with skin cancer in one of its various forms, making it the seventh most common form of cancer in the United States. Currently the only method to diagnose suspicious lesions is visual inspection and subsequent biopsy of suspicious lesions. Many cancerous lesions are missed and many benign lesions are biopsied using these techniques. This process is painful and expensive. The proposed research is driven by the need for a non-invasive skin cancer detection system. Presented here is a method for the optical determination of cancerous tissue using polarized light. This thesis describes the development of a polarimetric imaging system including its calibration and testing. In addition, experiments are performed to simulate changes in tissue, such as increased size of scatterers and increased scattering and absorption coefficients that often accompany tissue changes as it becomes cancerous. The effects of these simulated changes are tested on the Polarimetric imaging system in order to quantify changes in the Mueller matrix caused by the perturbations, and ultimately to relate them to observed changes in the Mueller matrices of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue. Finally, the Polarimetric imaging system is used to determine the Mueller matrix of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue to assess the system's capabilities for skin cancer diagnosis.