Mueller decomposition images for cervical tissue: potential for discriminating normal and dysplastic states.

We report the potential of Mueller decomposition images to discriminate the normal against the dysplastic (precancerous) states in cervical tissue. It is observed that in the epithelium region, depolarization power is sensitive to morphological changes during progression from normal to dysplastic state while retardance and diattenuation do not show any significant change. These morphological changes have been correlated with the microscopic images of the tissues. In contrast, it is the retardance which reveals the morphological changes around the stromal region. Additionally, we have evaluated the arithmetic mean of depolarization power and retardance from their respective decomposed images and have shown that this parameter has a potential to discriminate normal tissues against dysplastic ones.