Characterization of turbid medium through diffusely backscattering polarized light with matrix calculus-II

A diffusely backscattered polarized beam of laser radiation from a turbid medium has been characterized by optics calculus. The Stokes and Mueller parameters of polarized light are represented as a column matrix and the optical turbid medium as a 4/spl times/4 matrix. The tissue like turbid phantom system is considered homogeneous and the scattering medium contains one kind of randomly distributed asymmetric particles. We use polarized light from a He-Ne laser (/spl lambda/=632.5 nm) focused on the scattering medium. Different polarization components of backscattered light are obtained by varying the polarization state of the incident laser light and the analyzer configuration. The calculation of the 16 elements of the output Mueller matrix shows that theoretically only seven elements of backscattered light are independent and the remaining nine can be calculated through a symmetry relation. It is also confirmed through experiments. The matrix calculus concept for diffusely backscattered light fully characterizes the turbid medium. The experimental and theoretical results are in good agreement.